


Gathering Fires

by mindthebutterfly



Series: Burning Stars [4]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:53:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 62,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26574064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mindthebutterfly/pseuds/mindthebutterfly
Summary: "Ultraviolet light can only be seen under the right circumstances..."The Factions are ready to gather, but scattered and leaderless, the search begins for their promised successor to Khan Noonian Singh. While the Federation becomes embroiled in internal conflict, the Dominion is secretly plotting its next move, and Bajor makes a move of its own.A stolen ship...A frozen prison world...A secret alliance...With the future of the human race and the United Federation of Planets at stake, Starfleet sends for one of its most celebrated Ambassadors to return to Earth, and unify the division.
Relationships: Benjamin Sisko/Kasidy Yates, Beverly Crusher/Jean-Luc Picard, Data (Star Trek)/Original Female Character(s), Jadzia Dax/Worf, Julian Bashir/Original Male Character(s), Leah Brahms/Geordi La Forge, Leeta/Rom (Star Trek), Reginald Barclay/Original Female Character(s), William Riker & Deanna Troi
Series: Burning Stars [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582660
Comments: 14
Kudos: 6





	1. Stirring The Embers

**Author's Note:**

> So I didn't wait too long to start writing this, but its going to be intermittent. I really do want to do right by this series, and not leave it hanging. There are going to be more parts after this. I know! Shocking!

It was almost midnight when they gathered together in the clearing. Immediately he noticed there were only five people here, but the number of ships above them indicated that their audience was likely much greater. Most of them would be carrying listening devices, and he was no exception. It was just the five of them, but there was one they knew could not be present, and one they knew who would _never_ come. So five people stood there, looking suspiciously at one another across the clearing, contemplating the absence of the remaining five people who should have been here in representation.

“Without them it's futile,” said Moon, throwing her hands up, her black eyes wild and frustrated.

An asian woman dressed all in black, who had already tasted the blood of the battlefield and was thirsty for more, she was well known to all of them, but mostly by reputation. This was the first time that many of them had ever met in person.

“Not entirely,” said Ultraviolet, his eyes strangely cryptic with their glowing violet light, his scarred face and gray hair marking him as the oldest of the group. “So many are still changing hands…”

“There’s still time,” said Holly, her own eyes darting fretfully into the darkness. “They will come. We just need to give them a little bit more time!”

Holly was a bright cheerful counterpoint to Moon’s deadly dark beauty. Her red hair was long and wavy and flowing free, like a princess from a fairy tale, her eyes were bright and green, her lips red flower petals upon pale skin. She was cloaked in sky blue velvet and looking very much like a Queen holding court in their midst. But they knew she was a formidable match, despite her Faction’s reputation for peaceful commerce. She would, and could fight, if and when it was necessary, but not a moment before.

“It’s too soon,” Tinker murmured, saying exactly what he had been planning to say from the moment he stepped on the planet. This was clear in the fact that he put his hands in his pockets and waited.

He was very tall, bald, head wrapped in a hanky, dressed in an engineers jumpsuit and a grease stained leather long coat. Tall boots, and many zippers and pockets bulging with their contents showed that this ‘tinker’ was a man of many talents and skills.

“The anniversary will pass us by,” Joker rolled his eyes around in his head largely and leaning backwards, one foot back, and arms behind his messy blond head. “With nothing to show but this,” he jerked to look over at Moon accusatorially. “Mess.”

Joker was a wildly outrageous sight, with weapons probably concealed everywhere under the many layers of his jester themed costume. He was the youngest of the bunch, and had a healing scar across his hairline from a recent altercation. At least two of his teeth were gold and his neatly trimmed goatee was the only point of tidiness to his wild appearance.

“A mess which started with _Zimmerman_ ,” Moon hissed, her hot glower and gritted teeth were enough to make him change his posture to casually looking elsewhere. “Who was it that sold us out? Who _betrayed_ us? And then ran like a coward!”

“I would advise caution,” said Ultraviolet, eyes pensive, posture becoming tense. “He’s a despicable creature, for certain, but if we concentrate all our efforts on revenge on one man we already have lost him. Let him come to us.”

“In the meantime,” said Joker. “We need to decide our next steps. Do we fight or wait?”

“We wait,” said Ultraviolet.

“You have plans of your own,” said Holly, looking passively and hopefully for a less hazardous answer than killing.

He smiled at her.

“Ultraviolet light can only be seen, under the right circumstances…” he demurred.

“In other words,” said Joker, laughing and leaning forward, hands on hips. “He has no intention of telling us his plans!”

“If you can’t tell us anything then you shouldn’t speak!” Moon retorted.

Ultraviolet chuckled.

“I can say this; I stand by the treaty, and I am beginning a search of my own, but not for Zimmerman.”

“The Firebird?” Holly breathed the word, like a prayer.

“We’ve already searched!” Moon huffed. “For years now! The succession is a loss!”

“You seem convinced otherwise,” Tinker said softly, looking directly at Ultraviolet, totally reposed, arms crossed and a knowing expression in his pale amber eyes.

Ultraviolet smiled, the smile they all recognized meant that the serious business was now at hand.

“The Firebird is closer to hand than we think, and I finally have the information and people I need to begin the search again. The Brotherhood will fulfill its promise, we just need a little more time…”

“And a bigger ship?” Joker smirked, briefly giving Moon a glance, and leaned back. “I hope you two know what you’re doing taking on the Federation, because we sure as hell don’t…” 

“ _You_ don’t know what they’re doing,” Holly said, the only negative comment she had given. “But Neutrality will not openly oppose the Federation, not while they are watching us constantly.”

“Just remember, you made a promise to us,” Ultraviolet looked at her for a moment, holding her green eyes captive briefly with the violet glow of his own. “All of you did, to aid us in any way in our search.”

“Thirty days,” said Moon, putting her proverbial foot down as hard as it could be put down. “Then we meet again. If you cannot give us more useful answers by then…”

“War,” said Tinker, eyes silent and warning.

“Please...let’s not speak of war yet,” Holly said, though it was already futile. “Not without the others here to give their own views.”

“It will be war with the Children either way,” Ultraviolet said, looking tense. “They will accept nothing more or less than a completely perfect recreation of Khan as their leader...and we were never promised that by the geneticists.”

“Rebirth will stand by the treaty,” Moon put her hands on her hips. “If you can find the Firebird, or some clue as to his identity, before the next meeting…”

Ultraviolet turned to look at Joker, who had a very reluctant look on his face.

“Thirty days, my Wild Cards will be here,” he said, and turned to look at the last person in the clearing.

“The Tinkers will be here,” said Tinker, and put his hands in his pockets again. “And our friend Spider said he has been searching as well...so you’ll have the support of The Thread in your search.”

“So it's just the last five we must wait to decide their leaders,” said Moon. “And whether or not they will abide by the treaty.”

“Agreed. And with that, I think this meeting is now concluded.” Ultraviolet grinned, and then put his hands in his pockets in a mirror posture of Tinker. “Oh I almost forgot,” he said, before they were turning to leave. “Unity may have finally found a leader of their own…”

All eyes turned, and looked at him in sudden rapt attention. Anyone who could unite the severely scattered and ironically divided Unity was someone to watch out for.

\---------

In orbit around a small green planet, on board a cloaked Andorian fighter ship, a red haired man looked out the view port of the small colony the locals were now calling ‘Exodus’, a rather dark name, but he knew the leader of this colony was a man with dark humor.

None of those on board the stolen vessel even considered Starfleet the tiniest bit in control of this world. Captain Shelby was the Federation Puppet that Tempest had chosen to act as their mask, and she was a principled honest person who would work hard to make a stable environment here for the children, not knowing what was really going on, right under her nose.

He turned to look at his first officer.

“I will concede that 300 children may be too many for us to deal with, I believe it would be wise to share this harvest with the other Factions,” he theorized. “But what do you think, Moses? Is this a good start?”

“A perfect start,” said the man. “Many will want to call this system their home, M class world… away from the Dominion war...it will split the battlefield in half for us...”

“Neutrality and their allies on the other side,” the man, known only as ‘Shepherd’ to the Factions, strode across the deck of the ship. “Rebirth owes the Brotherhood a boon, but that is all. I think we can bring her support to our side, if we can provide her a leader that meets her exacting standards...and her extreme firepower will be extremely useful.”

“Careful Shepherd, she firmly believes in the sovereignty of the Firebird…” said Moses, and locked out his console and turned to look at him. “You need to gain her support before the Brotherhood succeeds in their search.”

“Ah but we have the information they lack,” said Shepherd, striding back to the captain’s chair, his medical uniform a strange contrast to a chair usually restricted to only red and gold. “I _know_ who the Firebird is. I was there when he was _made_. He will be a disappointment and a failure that nobody else could have predicted and will only further divide them. The Factions will never follow his rule. He is _nothing_ like Khan.”

Moses smiled a little, and turned to look at his console again, unlocking it with a couple of quick taps of the screen. Shepherd sat back in his chair, fingers pressed together in front of his face.

“Firebirds rise from the ashes...and then burn into ashes again. We shall bring the fire and forge ourselves a leader from iron and _blood_. Set course for Cold Station 12, warp five. It's time to see for ourselves what history seems to have forgotten.”

_Meanwhile, I’ll let off the search for the holo-engineer. My quarry will trip himself up soon and when he does...I shall have him in my grasp._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized just a few moments ago that I already used the chapter name 'embers' in the last part, so I altered this one, only a little. :)
> 
> I was tired of coming up with names, so the Faction leaders just use their codenames with each other. I loved coming up with the Faction leaders and their interesting personalities, Joker was fun to come up with. Holly was a work in progress in my mind from the moment I started writing this series. I really think I should start working more people from the tv series into the story though, or my OCs will take over completely.
> 
> ALSO: I understand that some people may be confused, as I also gave the little girl from the last part Holly. To avoid confusion I renamed the little girl to Haley, I hope that helps.


	2. Fire and Passion

Lieutenant Commander Data strode pointedly forward down the corridor, trying desperately hard not to catch the eyes of the group of engineers idling in the intersection laughing and gossiping together. He had recognized Lieutenant Reginald Barclay, a Bolian, Nivel Tross, and a woman, a woman he could not help but notice. She had one arm hooked into Barclay’s and was pressing her chin against his shoulder. Data’s ‘stomach’ twisted, which he didn’t know it could do, and he suppressed the urge to stare.

Lieutenant Grace Lacelle, Gracie to her friends, ‘Lacy Gracie’ by reputation, was only about a couple weeks new to the _Enterprise_. A beauteous woman with copious platinum blond curls, who was a rather lovely vision, with bright red lipstick, dark mascara and an hourglass figure. She had been very pointedly giving him obviously interested looks since he’d returned to the ship and had been doing her stern best to finagle him into their group whenever he met with Barclay for chess games. She was quite a good chess player herself and often she would play as well.

But of course this woman was Barclay’s new girlfriend, having surprised everyone into accepting a date from the awkwardly stuttering engineer. Data firmly reminded himself of this as he approached the group. He was a married man. And she was doing things to his positronic matrix he did not know was possible.

“Commander,” she immediately latched onto his presence as he approached. “On your way to the bridge? We were just off to the holodeck for a fun program.”

“Y-yes,” Barclay looked very embarrassed and hopeful. “A training program.”

“We’ve put together a recreation of the planet Minos, complete with the adaptive weapons array,” said Tross. “All with safeties on of course. It’s a good way to test your limits as an engineer and a fighter. Want to join us?”

“I’m afraid I cannot. Captain Picard has requested my presence in his ready room,” Data was feeling nervous about the meeting, but thought perhaps these people were maybe not the best people to confide in. “Perhaps another time?”

“A meeting with the big boss?” said Lacelle impishly. “Let us know how it works out. But if you are out of there fast we’ll be in the holodeck for…” she raised her uniform jacket sleeve to look at her wrist pointedly. “At least an hour. We have the rest of this shift free.”

Data frowned. The silver wrist watch she wore was a clear breach in standard uniform, but she never wore it on duty so nobody had been able to complain. Data would certainly not do so.

“Why do you wear that thing anyway?” asked Tross, sounding skeptical and ready for a fresh round of fun making at her expense. “Just ask the computer for the time.”

“It was my Grandmother’s,” Lacell said with a pout, and Data firmly turned to continue back down the hall. “Good luck on your meeting Commander!”

The group went back to gossiping and idling and Data found himself at last in the safe haven of the turbolift.

Blessed silence. He stifled the fiery urges that had taken him over in the woman’s presence and tried very hard to meditate himself into a point of calm, cool, collectedness. It was very difficult. She had been pressing him for a liason the second he had come on board, and had not been very subtle about it. It was a wonder that nobody else had mentioned it in light of her relationship with Barclay. He didn’t want to know what they had been saying about the poor man’s prospects of staying with her now that she was focused so totally on _him_.

“Bridge,” he said at last, feeling safe to travel to his destination.

Bad habits were hard to break, but bad _instincts_ were even worse. He wanted, no, needed Savil. He desperately missed her. Weeks of separation were not easily dealt with, and if he didn’t find a way to deal with this mess of new challenges to his virtual libido he would go mad. He knew adultery was wrong, he didn’t need an ethical program to tell him that. But virtual adultery...?

_Perhaps a holographic diversion?_

The turbolift opened, and he strode pointedly down and around the bridge towards the ready room door, which chimed immediately at his arrival.

“Enter!” Captain Picard wasted not a moment once he’d entered. “Data, please sit.”

He did so, at one of the small stools which connected to the front of the Captain’s desk, and he quickly felt his nerves returning to their previous edge. He began breathing deeply to calm himself.

If Captain Picard had noticed the android’s mental state of distress, he didn’t give any indication of it.

“As you know, we’ll soon be arriving at Starbase 41, for the upgrades to _Enterpise_ ’s warp engines, as well as _Destiny_ , which is a ship without a Captain, needing a man just like Riker to command her,” Picard seemed to have a moment of maudlin reflection, and Data could well understand. Their rather close crew was very very sad, but proud, to see Riker take command of his own ship, and the sister ship to _Enterprise_ at that. “Which means you need to start taking over his former duties as Commander. The promotion ceremony takes place the moment we arrive and we have multiple people getting new pips,” he leaned back and picked up a PADD from his desk to offer to him. “This is the crew roster of those who will be remaining on board to work on the ship upgrades. Have a look and ask me about any person you think should not be involved, or should be involved. Everyone else will be on forced shore leave, including me,” he looked very uncomfortable at this revelation. “Admiral Brooks has given firm orders to leave only a skeleton crew on board during the upgrade. You’ll be in command,” Picard was largely not mentioning the fact that this was solely because of how much time Data had already spent off duty for his honeymoon.

Data took the PADD, and gave it a quick glance over. He was extremely startled by the list.

“I’m sorry, Captain, but this list seems to be incorrect. Is Commander Laforge not to be involved…?”

“I’m afraid not. He will also be on forced shore leave,” Picard leaned back severely. “Part of your new command duties do include breaking unwanted news to crew members.”

“Geordi will not be happy,” Data admitted. “He had been looking forward to working with Doctor Brahms again.”

“I’m afraid Doctor Leah Brahms will not be in charge of the upgrades. Her husband, Commander Michael Brahms, is overseeing the project on her behalf. I was only recently informed of the changes,” Captain Picard looked down, almost angry with this admission.

“Did she give a reason for the change?” Data asked, shifting his mind back to duty mode. “She had related to Commander Laforge that she was looking forward to seeing what the new engine design could do.”

“She only cited her health as the reason,” Picard said, concern clearly written all over his face. “According to Admiral Brooks, Commander Michael Brahms is an eccentric, who likes to be the only command level engineer on board a ship during any project, and he very specifically picks a crew, and does not consider personal feelings when picking people for upgrade duties. Genius comes with certain privileges I suppose,” Picard sighed. “More logically, he’s choosing crew we decided will be transferred to _Destiny_ , so once they have done the upgrade on _Enterprise_ , they can remain on the starbase and more easily repeat the process on _Destiny_. Which would free us to return to the battlefront.”

Data scrolled down the list of people. Lieutenant Barclay would be transferring? That was going to go over very badly with the man himself, he loved serving on board the _Enterprise_. Unless...

“Barclay will be the new Chief Engineer on _Destiny_ ,” Data said, as if it was a matter of common knowledge.

“Certainly,” said Picard with a smile. “We don’t give up our very best for just anyone. And he’s already familiar with the engine design of this class of ship. I know he’ll be missed...but this is the chain of command, and you have to sometimes give up your best to give them room to grow.”

The last two engineers who would be involved in the upgrade were Lacell and Tross. All the newest officers on _Enterprise_ , it seemed, as well as Barclay. Of the usual bridge crew was Raegan, a transfer long expected, and Dodgeson, another one of the new crew members that had made an impact on them all by being the most boring and insular person that anyone had met. Too quiet for a human, in Data’s opinion. He had sat at helm almost consistently without anything but the bare minimum replies to any question and immediate agreement to any request given.

“Chalmers,” Data smiled a little coming to the name. “So will he be the operations officer on _Destiny_?”

“Commander Riker has been very impressed with him,” Picard said, smiling as way of an answer. “Your recommendation was well received.”

As if reading their minds, the door chimed and Riker strode in casually.

“Captain. We’re only two days to station 41,” he reported. “ _Destiny_ is going to be arriving soon after us, but not in time for the ceremony. And shuttlecraft _Esther_ reports that there has been a delay. But Doctor Crusher will already be waiting for us at the station, her own shuttle arrived without trouble.”

“Excellent, we’ll have all our crew back on board,” Picard stood to his feet and pulled down his jacket. “Well Data, you now have a duty to perform, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing what my new First Officer can do,” he smiled warmly and Data returned it, feeling the briefest flash of the Borg connection from Picard, sending him feelings of approval and pride.

“I too, sir. It has been a privilege serving with you both.”

He felt the words were almost too final, and he gave them a reassuring smile as he followed them out to the bridge, plodding silently over to the quiet helmsman Dodgeson to give him the news about his transfer.

\-------------

“All right people listen up!” said Geordi Laforge, who instantly regretted the harsh tone of his loud command. “Commander Data has given me the list of engineers staying on board to work on the engines, everyone else is on shore leave, off the _Enterprise_ , starting immediately upon arrival!”

He felt his vexation growing, even as he listed the names, then looked over at the last pair.

“Lieutenant Lacell,” he said, and then took a deep breath. “And...Lieutenant _Commander_ Reginald Barclay.”

“...Com...Commander?” Barclay seemed suddenly startled and Geordi put on his biggest grin.

“And now, the new Chief Engineer of the Starship _Destiny_ , as soon as _Enterprise_ has completed her upgrades,” said Geordi, offering his hand for a handshake. “Congratulations Reg. This promotion was well deserved.”

A round of cheers went up and Lacell kissed the startled man on the cheek, leaving a slight red print, and causing Geordi a considerable moment of surprise. She clearly was rather stuck on Reg despite how severely different they were as people, and despite the rumors of her interest in higher ranked officers on board. Namely Data. It was probably a good thing she was going with Barclay to the _Destiny_. They’d have time to really explore this strange new relationship without that distraction.

But Geordi was feeling all the disappointment from earlier filling him now even as he tried to keep the smile on his face and get back to the work of preparing the Engineering section for the new warp engine upgrades.

Commander Brahams had sent him a checklist of the things that needed to be done before their arrival to the station, and it was exhausting. First, because the new warp drive was designed to be installed over the basic spec design of _Enterprise_ , everything would have to be put back to those specs for the upgrade. All their usual kit-bashing, on the fly changes to the ship were to be reset. Every cable they had rewired, every chip that they had moved or replaced, all set back to exactly where they had been when the ship had first left the ship yards nearly two years ago. All computer programming upgrades, with a few exceptions here and there, downgraded back to the original protocols. And the bridge would have to be changed too so that in an emergency everything could be transferred flawlessly, the new design requiring direct contact to the bridge, rather than through auxiliary pathways, and the old configurations just would not work at all with this new drive. But if the changes were done exactly as described in the design, an engineer could manually operate all primary functions from the bridge, make adjustments, make quick changes and reroute connections without ever leaving the bridge, nor having to reroute everything first.

It was almost a dream come true. Engineering control from bridge usually consisted of one panel of basic controls and primary functions and that was it. He was curious to see if it did exactly as the design proposed.

But it was a lot of work to get done in only a few days, and his team had worked around the clock already, installing the new console design on the bridge, which was three times the width of the current console and requiring an entire section of wall taken out. Now they were getting back to work on the engineering side of things, with so very little sleep, and his mind flashed back to the other disappointment of the day.

He would not be helping _install_ the new engine. He was looking forward to trying it out, seeing what it could do, but the installation would be hands off for him, and that bothered him more than anything else.

The Chief Engineer should have been present in order to understand how the installation worked. It would have been a great way for him to get to know the new engines. They were so new in their design the current warp core was not even physically compatible. The old cores were the wrong size, so two redesigned cores would be installed, the primary and a backup in the storage bay behind the warp core in case the first needed to be ejected in an emergency. But the new core was apparently _that_ good that they only needed one secondary for an emergency. It could also run off raw unrefined dilithium too, which was dangerously radioactive, but very useful if there was an emergency and refined dilithium stores were spent. They could theoretically just beam aboard dilithium from the nearest planet and refine it later. And it had broken records for time from power down to power on in virtual testing. And flipped between warp speeds instantly.

Which hopefully would be good enough to match that silver ship that had been running rings around starships like _Sentinel_ , a _Defiant_ class ship designed for battle, and _Sutherland_ , not an outdated ship by any means, that had crashed on Colony 53. The prospect of an engine that could turn on a dime and perform maneuvers like that in space had every engineer on board drooling.

But most worrying to him was the news, Data had whispered to him, about Leah Brahms decision not to participate in the upgrades herself due to poor health. She had been cagey in her conversations with him about her involvement in the project, and now he knew. Her health was troubled.

Their conversations had been polite but strained lately, and he wondered sometimes if she regretted staying friends with him. Granted they never discussed that embarrassing incident when they met, but she had admitted that she had told her husband about it.

_Is that why I’m not on the project? He doesn’t trust me?_

But Leah had promised him she’d spend some time talking shop during their brief time together on the station. Their friendship was solid, if distant lately. He hoped she was all right.

And he really hoped he could get these changes done before her husband took over all the work. If he was judging him unfairly based on that one incident, he needed to show he was up to any task, and so was his crew.

His relationship with Leah Brahms, both professional and personal, depended on it.

\---------

Guinan lifted her head in careful consideration as she heard a shock of laughter coming from near the window, and turned her approving smile towards the group of engineers around the farthest table. They were celebrating Barclay’s promotion and transfer to _Destiny_ with a raucous display of both a Starship shaped cake, with candles, and multicolored party hats, and lots of syntheholic drinks. Many of them would be going back onto duty once the party was over so there was no real alcohol being served today. Commander Data was engaging Barclay in a quick round of chess, maybe one of the last the two of them would share before the man left. Guinan felt a touch of sadness at this.

Barclay had become a valuable crew member and friend to many of them. But Geordi Laforge was a power house, and trying to rank hop over his head was like throwing yourself at a brick wall. Until Laforge made second officer nobody would be taking his place. And he wasn’t yet, the new second officer would be Doctor Crusher this time. Doctors did sometimes take the second seat, and she was accomplished in command as well.

_A shame for Laforge, but the Enterprise still needs a Chief Engineer. Beverly can juggle a medical shift and a bridge shift, she’s done it many times before._

The engineer in question was sitting almost by himself in the loud group, trying to encourage Data as he made chess moves, but showing every sign of the stress he was under lately to overperform the young hot shots that had been moving their way into his sphere hoping to one day take over command of the engine room.

Geordi would not budge. And Guinan saw him give considerable looks of dismay towards Lieutenant Lacell, who was whispering chess instructions quietly into Barclay’s ear. Barclay had always been a good player, she was clearly backseat chess driving.

Data seemed to consider for a moment, and then said something that caused everyone to laugh, and Lacell to outright turn red and turn around back to them all.

 _Wise,_ Guinan thought. _He knows how to deal with that one. She makes herself out to be dumber than she really is. I can see she wants to be the one playing chess with Data._

And maybe something else. Guinan was so very concerned by the looks the two had been giving one another. She knew Data was an ethically programmed android who would stay very true to Savil, but Lacell was smart and strong and more than what she seemed. Would she be able to get around his considerable programming if she was that determined to?

_I hope not...He’s becoming more and more human every day. An unfulfilled love life is another aspect of being human he’s probably dealing with._

She was so lost in thought for a moment that she almost missed Geordi giving his excuses and getting up to come to the bar. Almost.

“Hey Commander, sure looks like a great party over there, think Barclay would mind if I went over and joined them?”

“I don’t see why not,” he said, looking morose. “You’ll have more fun than I am.”

“That bad huh,” she said. “It’s hard to lose a good officer.”

“Tell me about it,” he took the drink she had silently poured for him without his needing to ask. “When did my life get so frustrating? I mean, I can handle Reg having to leave us, and Commander Riker, but all these changes are happening so fast!”

Guinan sensed a rat, and leaned forward.

“You aren't’ moping around up here with me because you don’t want to be with your friends celebrating, something else is bothering you. Perhaps _someone_?”

Geordi smiled, wryly.

“Guess I couldn’t hide it from you huh?” he said, and put his hands on the top of the bar. “I have been having these great, professional, long distance conversations with Doctor Leah Brahms for a while now, you remember her?”

“The woman whose hologram you programmed for…”

“Yeah,” Geordi cut her off pointedly. “The real Leah is a professional, a good person for me to bounce engine ideas off of, and vice versa. I value her professionally, the help she’s given me over the years, helping my career flourish. If I want to one day maybe have a command, or build my own engines, or even design my own ships, if that’s what I want to do, I need to have professional contacts like her. But now...she’s stopped talking to me. Completely. And Data said she isn’t well. I’m worried about her…do I contact her? Do I wait until we reach the station when I can talk to her in person? Is her husband keeping me off of the engine upgrade crew because of her?”

Guinan could smell another rat. He had used the word ‘professional’ three times, almost pointedly. And she was brave enough to speak the thought this word had signalled to her.

“It depends, are you still holding a candle for her?”

“Guinan…it’s been years since that happened.”

“It's important for you to know,” she insisted. “You need to know the answer to that question. Because if you do, you have to ask yourself why you really have been contacting her all these years. Is she still married?”

“She’s...still married…” Geordi said, with reluctant finality, and dawning realization in his eyes.

She knew the moment he realized he had been secretly hoping the woman would end her marriage. She could see it in the slight loosening of his mouth, and the grief stricken upturn of his eyebrows.

“See, Geordi, the thing about marriage is simple,” she looked up at Data for a moment. “Temptation is always all around you, asking you to do things that maybe would not be constructive to your marriage, such as flirting with another person.”

She pointed over to where Lacell had finally taken over Barclay’s chair and was pointedly engaged with playing Commander Data head to head.

“However,” Guinan picked up her rag, the one she wiped the bar with, and carefully folded it and laid it on the bar top. “Some people are so happily married and so fully committed that they don’t even recognize temptation when they see it. Nor do they notice the interest being given to them by another…”

Barclay was now leaning over Lacell’s shoulder, egging her on to beat Data at his game, totally oblivious to the smoldering looks the two chess competitors were giving each other.

“And some people are so fiercely possessive of their loved ones, that they will walk all over any perceived threat…”

Lacell made a very bold move to the top level of the three dimensional chess board, and seemed very fiercely confident in her move, levelling a fierce and determined look at her opponent that spoke more than a thousand words about her true intent.

“And some people just don’t realize when they’ve already lost...”

Data seemed to consider, with a single startled eyebrow raised and gasps from the rest of the group, he laid down his king in concession. Lacell whooped in delight and everyone clapped and cheered for her. Data rarely ever lost at chess, nor tied, and it was always a moment worth celebrating, for him too. He enjoyed a challenger at his level as much as anyone else would. She had hidden depths to her, Lacell, and Guinan would maybe have to reassess her opinion of the woman.

She turned back now to look at Geordi Laforge, feeling considerable sorrow and concern for him in every fiber of her being. He looked like a lost child, wanting a grown up’s supportive hand, and she didn’t know how to give it to him.

“You’ve already lost Geordi, so maybe, just maybe, you should ask yourself very carefully, if you really have been writing purely professional letters to this woman all these years, and what exactly her answers have been. Before you contact her asking if her health is all right. There are so many possible answers she could give you. But if she was, as you said, a professional contact, she already would have made contact by now, and let you know she was unavailable for communication. Wouldn’t she?”

Geordi’s blue artificial eyes widened in sudden understanding and worry, and he swallowed.

“What do I do?”

“I would go say congratulations to Barclay, make your excuses, and go check your messages one last time, and not send anymore. And then, forget about her, and move on. Before this relationship you’ve been having with her makes it impossible to be on a professional level with her or her husband. If she’s sick, and he’s the one taking over her work, then _he’s_ going to be the one you have to impress now, if you want to keep your professional life in order.”

Laforge seemed to pale completely, and then swigged down his drink, thanked her quickly and got up firmly to go over to the table. Guinan watched his hasty congratulations, and apologetic excuses, and then followed him with her eyes as he left.

Her concern was mirrored in Commander Data’s eyes. Guinan looked over at the android officer, who was watching the now closed lounge door in concern, and then he turned to sit down, now watching as Lacell and Barclay faced off in a chess game of their own.

It was time for her to go join the party.

\---------

Lieutenant Commander Reginald Barclay lay stretched out on his bed, looking at nothing more or less than the most beautiful woman in the galaxy sleeping beside him, feeling as if everything in his life was going right.

He could not understand it. Why had Grace Lacell chosen him? He hadn’t seen it coming, really, he had felt as if he had been stagnating, and had even been considering a career change. They were alway looking for holographic programmers on Jupiter station…

But now...a whole starship engineering section that was entirely his. The possibilities were endless. What had he done to impress Commander...no... _Captain_ Riker?

The promotion ceremony was only hours away, but they were already ranked in the paperwork. Lieutenant Commander Reginald Barclay. It had a nice ring to it.

“A penny for your thoughts?” Grace asked him, using the anachronistic phrase that was still sometimes used by people in the Federation. Ferengi had adapted it to use ‘slip’ instead of ‘penny’.

“I can’t believe everything that is happening to me,” he said, looking down at her, beautiful, mysterious, her platinum hair tickling his bare shoulder. “A beautiful girlfriend, a promotion, this doesn’t happen to people like me. Not in real life.”

“It does,” she said. “Finding a nice genuine guy like you? Doesn’t happen to beautiful girls like me in real life,” she admitted. “It’s nice…”

Reginald frowned. She looked sad.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, and she sat up, looking off towards the stars outside.

“These things usually don’t last, and I hate even thinking that. We _both_ deserve this,” she said. “You are so adorable,” she bent down to kiss him, then looked up.

He did too. Her wrist watch, on the side table, was flashing yellow.

“Sorry, I set alarms for things,” she reached over him to grab it, and reset it. “Not to worry. It's just a reminder to not be late for duty…” she smiled and got to her feet. “I should get back to my quarters and change first. Here? After the ceremony?” she smiled at him, and winked.

“Here,” he agreed, and rolled over with a smile to watch her get dressed again and leave, grinning from ear to ear.

Life...was absolutely perfect.

\---------

Sitting on the bridge, Dodgeson almost felt it before he saw it, the yellow flash, and he clandestinely pulled his sleeve up over his wrist. With a quick tap on his console he requested a temporary relief officer and then waited for her arrival before getting up to go to the head.

Once alone, he ignored the sink and the mirror for a moment, and looked down immediately at his wrist.

The yellow flashing signal indicated a serious delay of some kind. A moment of concern filled him and he reset the watch and looked up at the mirror and frowned.

Brown skin, unremarkable brown eyes and severely short hair, he could have been any officer of any crew. He knew he was unremarkable and that had always been to his advantage. He slipped in and out of a conversation unnoticed and quickly forgotten.

_But I don’t forget. I remember everything. Every insult, every abuse…_

The kicks. The shoves. The orders to sweep and clean. He had practically been a slave on his home colony, designed only to serve the needs of others. He had purposely chosen himself a servant’s name to go with his mild outward appearance.

_Jeeves. Well I will turn the tables on them. Jeeves, in those historical novels, was a brilliant mastermind as well as a butler, silently controlling the outcome whilst everyone else flailed around him. I will be the secret quiet helper of our group, I will make myself absolutely vital. Until…_

Until he could get back to the geneticist to complete the work on his code that he had been slowly paying for over the last several months. But his code was not finished and he would have to be very careful about it. Money was not easy to come by in Federation space, and his gambling wagers were very conservative on purpose to keep him from risking any unwanted debts.

As intelligence had increased, so too had his thirst for more advancements. But as an adult, he could only get these advancements one painstaking procedure at a time. He was not as malleable as had been as an embryo. Pain be damned, he just wanted to be like the others!

_Full engineering. That is what I want. To be a productive, and reproductive, member of society. But until then…_

Until then he would wait. For now his place was on the bridge, ready, and obedient, and waiting for his next set of commands.

Jeeves was _always_ ready to serve.

\-------------

“Computer? ETA to station 41?”

She almost immediately knew what the answer would be.

“It will be approximately two hours until the _Enterprise_ reaches station 41…”

“Yes, all right, fine, inform me when we arrive,” she snapped, and sat on her bed and moaned.

All this time with Barclay and she’d barely gotten any headway at all. And time was running out. She kicked the bed, beat it with her fists, and flopped down pouting.

And she hated it. He really _was_ a nice guy. He didn’t deserve this. Worst assignment _ever_!

 _I really just want to get this over with, get his authorization codes, and end the farce. If only so Commander Forget-Me-Please will stop giving me bale looks about our relationship while running like a frightened deer every time I make a pass. Happily married my ass! That android wants me, he can deny it all he wants. But marriage is_ nothing _to desire, Commander. I was designed to be another man’s perfect mate...and I am now every man’s perfect_ nightmare _!_

She looked out at the starfield beyond the window, and wondered where out there in the scattered lights was _Esther_.

_Delays, delays and more delays. This is the worst deal. But we need this victory, please, by god, we need this. We have been hiding long enough. We need a voice and a chance to make our own future…_

She sat up, and considered the watch. She considered sending a message, but knew Dodgeson would not be able to answer right away, probably having already been to the bathroom and back to check the last one. At least Dodgeson was consistent.

_If that’s his real name. We both took fake names for this, I just know it. What about…?_

She reconsidered talking to Chalmers again. Recruiting him had failed, and she knew it would only annoy him to try again. He was just too busy right now, and he was keeping quiet about what he was doing here. She didn’t want to stir the hornet’s nest. He was going to be transferring to _Destiny_ in earnest. Interfering in the activities of another Faction would not win her brownie points with their leader or her own.

_Eyes and ears everywhere, that’s why The Thread wants him there on Destiny. I wish he was one of ours...but then again…_

They had claimed a much better prize. She smiled and leaned back, looking down at her watch face and considered contacting the Commander.

_Not yet, oh I know he wants it, but he has to ask for it. I’m not at everyone’s beck and call, mission be damned. I am happy with Reggie…_

When had she mentally started calling him that? She frowned again, and looked back out at the stars.

_Not anymore, after the party tonight I’ll get him so drunk and drag him back here and he’ll be giggling and chuckling out the code numbers!_

She hoped. The guilt was killing her more than anything else. The alternative was to use his hands manually while he was passed out, to press to the PADDs to give her the authorization she needed to do what needed to be done.

_It's bullshit...it’s utter bullshit. I hate it!_

She sighed and picked up a PADD and considered.

Their leader had banned them from the Thread right now, it was not yet fully secure and they had to stay mission oriented. She really wanted to talk to her friends.

But they were getting much closer to the station. This was their final stop, and then there would be no more lying or subterfuge. They would all be together.

 _Really, I just want to be myself with people up at my level,_ she decided, and tossed the PADD back onto the bedspread. _But then again, if I were that smart, I would have gotten the codes by now._

But she knew, deep inside, she had barely scratched the surface of what her augmentation was capable of, and this scared her. More than the possibility of caring about Lieutenant Commander Reginald Barclay. She knew Data was pretty unlimited in his gifts as an Android, and she was basically programmed to be the ultimate Succubus. Taken together, what could their combination become?

_Kismet._

The thought was such a turn on that she jumped up with an angry growl of complaint and rushed off to take a sonic shower. Somehow, she knew this was the only thing standing between her and total loss of the little control she had.

That any of them had.

\-----------

The darkness of his quarters was stifling. The glowing light of station 41 approaching was an accusation, a silent rotating obelisk of guilt. Confusion gripped him, as tightly as he gripped the new Commander’s jacket in his hands.

Data sat on his bed, in his undershirt and uniform slacks. No dress uniforms would be required for this promotion ceremony, but he was not concerned about that. The stripe of red he was getting was not right. The yellow had been a more apt color. Especially down the back...

_I’m a coward._

Data swallowed the thought, noted the internal use of contraction with pride, and then shook his head. He was not focusing, and the less he focused, the more likely the fiery feelings he had been suppressing would come to the fore. He had to put his best foot forward.

_Command. I have worked all my life to make it here...and now…_

He got up, shirt still in his hands, and went out to survey the rest of his quarters quietly. He noted Spot on her favorite couch cushion, and mentally made a note to have her moved to the kennel. She would be safer there until he could decide what to do about her. He didn’t want her to leave his life, but he knew she was going to be a complication, a complication he couldn’t afford.

“Computer, what is the current time?”

It spoke out the answer for him and he mentally compared it to his internal chronometer. At least that still functioned properly. But right now...

Right now he was a fiery being of burning passions, of abandonment and lust, desiring a woman who wasn’t his wife, and hating himself in every way shape and form for it.

_Coward...she is just a sexy woman! She is not Savil! You barely even know her! Why am I made this way?_

He wondered if human men asked themselves this question, as he returned to the bedroom, carefully swinging the jacket around as he pulled it on, and then examined himself in his mirror.

He just didn’t recognize the man in the mirror anymore. It was a very unnatural, and not very comfortable feeling.

A sapphire glow on the bedside table was demanding his attention in the reflection of the mirror. He turned, and looked quietly down at the silver band lying near his beside control panel, and picked it up.

The tiny sapphire gemstone was flashing, blinking excitedly. It was signaling in Morse code that _Esther_ was back on schedule, and thus so were they.

 _I am a coward...I do not want to become a Commander now. I have found my purpose. This whole subterfuge is just a sour taste. But if I can just have this one more ceremony with my friends, one last happy moment, when my life is my own, where all I have ever wanted can come true, then I will surrender. Surrender to my programming, and to my purpose. Because I was not designed for a career in Starfleet. And I never_ was _._

He zipped up the jacket, examined himself in the mirror, and considered brushing his hair the usual way, one last time, for his friends, before giving up all pretense and becoming what he was…

An android designed to appear human but meant for something else completely. He had another purpose, and it was towards that purpose he finally turned off the flashing blue light of his watch, pressing the face once in acknowledgement so that the amber light of his own gemstone would indicate to the others he had received the message, and then again, holding it a few seconds more to turn the light off. He strapped the damn thing to his wrist.

_If there was a God, there would be a divine intervention. But only one god drives me now._

A fiery god. A burning god. A fiery bird to which he was chained by programming protocols and hidden circuitry, dragging him onward towards the damnable future.

He could not escape this heat. He wasn’t sure he would if he could. A feeling of resignation had suddenly fallen over him, of complete and contented acceptance of everything he had been working towards culminating in this one moment. This one perfect moment where he would obey the new religion that he had been programmed to follow, the fulfillment of all his creator’s hard work, determination, blood sweat and tears. His destiny fulfilled in one single moment of revelation.

_Kismet._

He paused for a moment, checked the time again, and decided, against his better judgement, that he still had time for a sonic shower.

It was probably for the best. At least the showers would always remind him of Savil and the happy life they had planned together, that he was now throwing away to answer the question of this burning heat that was filling his chest and searing into his brain.

_Locate the Firebird. Fine. I will do that. But Father I hope you are burning in hell right now for all of this, because I already am!_

There was nothing left for him to do now but to open his arms to destiny and welcome its fiery embrace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't sure, whether or not I wanted to reveal that Data was one of the watch wearers, but I couldn't find a way to make this chapter or any of it work otherwise. But I didn't want to spend too much time on this either, when I get writing I don't stop and sometimes write in the wrong direction and have to back track so I have to make decisions like this or end up writing a chapter thirteen times.


	3. The Point Of No Return

The main mezzanine of space station 41 was fit to burst with officers, all standing shoulder to shoulder at attention, and Captain Jean-Luc Picard could see their smiles and feel their pride deep down in his bones.

It was a rare occasion that promotions were celebrated with such a grand display, with the space station personnel in attendance. Admiral Brooks, on his immediate right, tall and imposing, and almost as bald as Picard, almost, and Brooks’ beautiful wife Stephanie nearby in a row of chairs with civilians on the station who could not help but want to be present for such a party.

Well, a lot of command level officers were being promoted today. Picard had done with the ensigns and was considering all the pips on the velvet display that a young boy, Noah Powell, was holding for him. He was looking quite happy to be serving as his ‘helper.’ Picard knew the young man was also severely happy to have his mom, Alyssa Ogawa, in the line of officers being promoted, and he would be coming to her next. But now, he had a rather tall, lanky, and extremely nervous looking twenty two year old in front of him who was being promoted to Lieutenant-Commander, who would be second officer on the _Destiny_ , and who must have realized how soon his promotion had come for he whispered ‘so soon’ to himself, not realizing he had been overheard.

“Yes, Mister Chalmers,” said Picard, smiling. “Because such due diligence in an officer cannot be ignored,” and he pinned the pip on carefully to the startled man’s collar.

 _Officers are moving up fast,_ Picard mentally assessed, as he pinned Ogawa next.

“What would the _Enterprise_ sickbay be without you,” he found himself saying to her, having promised himself he would say just a tiny bit about each person receiving a command level pip today. _Or Doctor Crusher for that matter? They’ve always worked so very well together..._

It was Reginald Barclay he came to next, and his smile of delight was genuine.

“You, sir, have quite cleanly surprised everyone with how far you’ve come and how much you’ve grown. This is well deserved Mister Barclay, quite well earned, and losing you to _Destiny_ is a loss that will be felt, of that I have no doubt…”

Reginald Barclay looked like he would cry but he was smiling so wide his face would probably crack if he smiled anymore. Picard had been shaking all their hands and he gripped this man’s firmly, feeling none of the trembling there that may have come before it. None of what Picard had said had been a lie, this was truly a remarkable officer in every respect.

So at last, Picard came down to his new First Officer. Data was also smiling, his smile restrained, biting his lower lip in a very human expression, and Picard marveled as he smiled back at him.

“Commander Data...For you I have nothing more or less than the most deepest respect and trust. I have never served with a more dedicated officer, and look forward to serving many more years by your side...though at this rate,” he peered down the line. “Everyone will be getting their own ship before long.”

Everyone twittered in laughter and Data gasped out a choking laugh of his own as Picard pinned the pip on.

He felt it before he saw it, the soft cool of liquid from a pale cheek dripping onto his fingers and he was startled by the tears there.

Data quickly tried to compose his emotions as they shook hands, but it was too late, a smiling Deanna Troi had said “Aw, Data...” and another round of happy laughter followed. Picard stepped back pointedly to give the officer his dignity, and to make room for Admiral Brooks, who smiled down at young Noah Powell briefly before looking up and down Commander Riker with an appraising eye.

“An Admiral knows only two great joys in his career,” he said softly. “Seeing the many ships under his command perform great works of exploration and discovery, and picking the officers who will command those ships. And no promotion has been more long coming than yours. A lot of Admirals were vying to be the one to do it, it’s quite the feather in my cap I tell you what,” he pinned the pip on the collar of the amusedly grinning man, and a lot of laughter followed. “ _Destiny_ is a top of the line ship, which needs a top rate Captain. That is you. I only wish they had been able to be present for this ceremony,” _Destiny_ was still on route. “Congratulations Captain Riker!”

Applauds followed, loud, raucous, and Picard looked out over the row of officers all smiling in their shiny new pips. A lot of ensigns had also been promoted to lieutenant, and they were all so young to his eyes that he felt a momentary sense of loss.

 _Never let me leave my command, for that is where destinies are found,_ he decided, looking back up the row, and coming back to Riker and Data, who were shaking each other’s hands, and Picard felt a sudden loss of balance.

William Riker had been such a presence in his command and his career, a vital piece in the _Enterprise_ puzzle, and he was leaving, and in his place he could not have wanted any other officer at his side. Data looked well and thoroughly ready to throw himself out of an airlock however, possibly in embarrassment, and Picard carefully gave the man a chance to reground himself with a firm handshake and an offer to talk later before turning to go down and reshake all the hands of his officers again. Riker had beaten him to the punch by going down the line himself and a lot of hand shakes followed.

And the party that followed would be one for the record books.

\-------------

The _Enterprise_ was a beautiful silver glow amidst the backdrop of stars, and he looked at her with covetous eyes, like the Martians from the _The War of the Worlds_ , and greedily delighted in knowing that he was in fact, designed for such a ship as this and no strange microbes would be bringing about his death, he was very much created to be resistant to such things.

He knew starships well. He had once been a starship Captain named Samuel Morgan. No longer did he use that name, but he _would_ be a Captain again, it wouldn’t be much longer now.

Next to him his companion was carefully maneuvering the shuttle towards the _Enterprise_ ’s stern, her focus and concentration on the panel, and the careful taps of her fingers, so much less forceful than before when she had met him. She had been a bit of a fumbling mess, a run away security officer with little prospect of promotion, antisocial and isolated. How she had grown.

“Shuttlecraft _Esther_ to _Enterprise_ , requesting permission to dock?”

“One moment…'' The silence between the radioed comment and the final response was nerve wracking. “Permission granted, shuttlecraft _Esther_ …please proceed with the docking.”

He watched the hull of the ship approaching slowly, too slowly for his liking, but he schooled himself calmly into a neutral state as he left Angel’s side, going to the back of the shuttle and examining their payload as he prepared himself for their arrival.

Phasers and phaser rifles, knives, micro explosives, transport limiters, more of those clever little shield spheres Angel liked. It was a bit of overkill really, but they had to be prepared for anything, and he purposefully started arming himself with every weapon he could think of that might come in handy, looking forward to trying the little spheres for himself. The most important and precious piece of the mess was sitting almost casually off to the side, like a forgotten relic from ages past.

The stolen Romulan cloaking device. If only this technology could be replicated, and reverse engineered. There were already efforts underway by the Tinkers to perfect the technology. A bit of stealth would always go a long way with anyone, but they would only want stealth if there could be a way to overcome the detection of cloak signatures. It had been annoying the Klingons and Romulans as much as them that the Federation could now see cloaked ships so easily by simply scanning for large concentrations of tachyon particles.

“Ultraviolet,” Angel’s voice came suddenly from the front, with an edge of concern. “We have a problem!”

He returned to the front, strapping one last weapon to his body, and looked down at her console.

_Cairo has been rerouted to...oh damn! Who? Who sold us out?_

He snapped up his jacket cuff and put in a quick series of presses to the face of his watch, feeling his energy rising. They would have to leave now, ready or not.

It helped that most of the _Enterprise_ crew was on the station, celebrating...

_She’s as good as mine...but if Cairo gets here first...if the mole causes trouble, we will never leave…_

With violet eyes he watched the approach of the hull of the ship with a feeling now of dread, and energized covetousness. 

_Mine...you should have been mine...and you_ will _be now,_ he felt the possessiveness and lust for the purely silver and tritanium space creature called _Enterprise_ filling every molecule of his body. _Everything and everyone else be damned!_

\--------------

“Commander Data!” he was quickly set upon by a grinning man in command red, who grabbed his hand for a firm shake. “Congratulations! Yes sir congratulations!” 

He was rakishly handsome, this man. He had messy brown hair, stubble, was in his late thirties, and he spoke with a Scottish accent. Data caught the whiff of a musky aftershave that was rather masculine and not unpleasant. This was Commander Michael Brahms, and Data found himself almost instinctively looking for Geordi Laforge, who was beside him and had been waiting to see the Brahms all day. This man was not someone to forget, by any stretch.

“I know you’ve met my wife,” and the man actually side stepped so that Professor Leah Brahms could come forward in the pressing crowd. “Goodness knows she’s the woman of the hour. Everyone I’ve spoken to thought she was the one in charge here, when they heard my name. Only too well deserved, at that...I took her last name when we married! It was a good fit for me, but you’d take your wife's name too if your last name was Druimeanach. Most people can’t even pronounce it, let alone spell it…”

It didn’t take long for Leah to press passed her husband to take Data’s hand, smiling, beautiful, hair wrapped around her head in a clean coronet, her eyes impish, so very instantly recognizable from all her pictures, her history and her work known to so many people. She was very quietly letting her eccentric other half do all the talking, not seeming the least bit upset about it, and Data returned the smile.

“Congratulations Commander,” she said softly.

“Congratulations to you two as well,” he said, being the first one to indicate, with a soft nod, the rather pregnant belly she was in possession of.

“Oh, thank you,” she said, and looked down at her stomach briefly, then over at her husband Michael, who grinned cheekily and quite proudly. “We wanted to surprise everyone...I’ve been living like a hermit though, I’m afraid my stomach is rather delicate right now. I’ve been working on my engine designs mostly. But we were surprised by how many people were worried about my health,” she looked over at Geordi briefly and then back to her husband. “We’ve decided that if she’s a girl, to call her Amelia, after his mother, and if a boy, Theodore, like my father…”

“Mum was right thrilled when I told her, right thrilled…”

Michael Brahms then went into a long exposition on the names and their historical meanings and Data finally gave himself a moment to turn and look at Geordi, who Leah Brahms was pointedly not looking at, and was instead looking at her husband as if he were the sun and moon.

Geordi was smiling, but Data could feel the tension in every muscle in his friend’s body that indicated the smile was being forced. He was not thrilled at all at this turn of events.

“Well, I am really looking forward to working with you,” said Data pointedly, taking Commander Brahm’s startled hand to shake firmly. “I have to go find Doctor Crusher, please excuse me…Commander...”

He wasn’t trying to abandon his friend, but he knew Geordi wanted a chance to talk to Leah Brahms himself. Commander Brahms was working the room like a consummate professional party goer and taking over every conversation. Geordi wouldn’t get a chance to talk to her if Data were hanging around drawing even more attention away from him.

It wasn’t Doctor Crusher he eventually ran into, it was Reginald Barclay and his group, laughing, and drinking the complimentary wine that Admiral Brooks had brought aboard in boatloads just for their party. Brooks was known for throwing big parties and celebrating any occasion with a lot more gusto than sometimes was necessary and every inch of the station was now filled with people drinking wine and conversing. Barclay was no exception where he stood, being the central flower of attention for several people. Lieutenant Gracie Lacell gave Data a look that was rather alluring as he approached.

_Or maybe that’s just my imagination…_

“Congratulations Mister Barclay,” he shook the man’s hand, as he had done earlier up on the main deck.

“You as well, Commander,” he said, and it seemed that Reg couldn’t get enough of the praises. Lacell looked, for want of a better word, tired of it. Really _really_ tired.

A strange vibration suddenly went up his arm, and he knew the moment Lacell felt it too. Everyone else, oblivious, kept laughing and shaking hands, and drinking, and for a moment, he kept himself focused on that. He accepted one last hand shake and untangled himself from the crowds as quickly as possible, Lacell giving him a very firm and warning look before he left.

A look that said, _Don’t forget I’m here…_

How could he forget? His left wrist was silently vibrating with energy and he waited until he had finally freed himself from the crowd of people tangled near the drinks table to check his watch.

The bright purple flashing light was almost a summons of death.

_Esther has arrived…_

And with _Esther_ ’s arrival, their timetable had suddenly changed.

 _Now…_ said the flashing light. _It's happening now!_

And suddenly, he could barely see from the feeling that he had been completely, and utterly unprepared for this despite all his careful pre-planning. He found an empty office off the main hallway, and found a console and began tapping in commands.

The two new engine cores and all the supplies for the upgrade had already been beamed aboard. And the station was filled with personnel from _Enterprise_ that it otherwise wouldn’t have been. So _now_ was very suitable. But he was far too concerned with a work order in the list in front of him to worry about the fact that the new engine upgrade was yet to be installed, the old warp core still in place.

_Damn, so that is why he wants it to happen now. Who did this?_

Data gave six hard presses to the face of his watch, knowing that everyone who hadn’t checked their watch would feel the second vibration and be instantly on alert. _Cairo_ ’s captain had been ordered to reroute to the station and have their ‘party’ arrested, and Data was only able to see this situation because he was in the chain of command to apprehend them. His own name wasn’t on the list...nor the two people approaching on _Esther_ who must have intercepted the orders first...and...

_You sold us out...whoever it is, you sold us out and now I have to get us out of here fast…!_

He quickly typed in his new command codes and was relieved that the ‘payload’ for the station was still in place. The Brahms had done their work. He input the final command to release the neuro-sedative gas into the atmosphere, hoping that the rest of them had taken his instructions to board the _Enterprise_ immediately to heart and had done so.

_Estimated time to full dispersal. Ten minutes. Not soon enough…too soon for my comfort. I hope they are all on the move._

He quickly armed himself with a phaser, and started the long process of hacking into the _Enterprise_ and getting her ready to make way as soon as possible.

\---------

“Commander Laforge,” Commander Michael Brahms laughed a little, and pulled back away from the man pointedly. “I know you haven’t seen _my_ Leah in _ages_ , but she _needs_ a bit of air. You don’t mind if we leave you…?”

“...to go for a walk?” Leah input helpfully, watching Geordi Laforge’s expression turn from extreme discomfort to extreme disappointment in seconds.

Michael could be extremely possessive at times, a trait that had endeared him to her when they married. Not so much to everyone else.

“Oh, no, not at all. Go right ahead I’ll just...see if I can find Doctor Crusher and Data…” he said lamely, and turned away sadly.

Leah could not help her relief, carefully putting a hand on her stomach as she quietly followed Michael, who was putting on a good show of wanting to get his wife away from the crowds.

But her hands were trembling. Her heart was beating rapidly and her lungs were in knots. The infant in her belly was sleeping, but wouldn’t much longer with the way her blood pressure had risen and how quickly she was moving, and she tried to calm herself, an active infant tended to kick a lot. One of the many things about pregnancy she had not been expecting at all.

The second vibration on her wrist could have only meant one thing. Michael had chucked all concern for being detected out of the window and checked his watch openly.

“Now, it's _now_ ,” he said, voice a bare whisper, and pulled her by the arm a little more forcefully now. “Someone sold us _out_ …”

Her stomach lurched and she suppressed her natural panic, smoothing her reaction into a soft smile for the people they passed as she mentally calculated all the worse case scenarios now open to them for their escape. She let Michael pull her by her arm pointedly towards the ship docking row access hallway, away from people, hopefully they could get free of…

“Commander,” Lieutenant Commander Reginald Barclay stopped them quietly. “Are you going on board?”

The woman with him, Gracie Lacell, was looking very very agitated. And with good reason. She still had her hanger on, hanging on. Which meant she hadn’t been able to shrug him off, or else she still needed his codes, or his hand print, for proper engineering access. It had to be a command rank level engineer, and they weren’t added to the personnel roster yet.

_Damn!_

“Ah, no, my wife and I just needed a little air...and a walk…”

“Oh,” said Lacell pointedly. “We were doing the _same_ , shall we?”

Michael took the unspoken message severely to heart and took Leah by the arm and the four of them continued down the row, neither Barclay, nor Leah, really, knowing what was going to happen next.

\---------

Geordi Laforge knew that he couldn’t help himself. He just couldn’t help himself. It had been unsettling to see Leah Brahms so pregnant. To see her looking embarrassed and unhappy to be there, and then to have that overbearing, overconfident, snarky, loud, _obnoxious_ …!

 _She can’t possibly be happy with that man!_ he tried to convince himself, even as he silently found his way to the edge of the crowd. _She wanted to talk to me, and he clearly wouldn’t let her!_

He stopped in his tracks and turned. He was not going to let that go unchallenged. She wasn’t happy and he had seen how stressed she was when they suddenly decided to leave.

He wasn’t going to interfere, just make sure she was all right, just make sure she wasn’t being...pressured.

A small silent part of himself knew this wasn’t rational. He was seeing things that weren’t there. A small part of himself knew she was happy with her husband, and that the baby point of fact sealed the deal.

But the rushed way they left, the severity of possessiveness of the other man, the expression in Leah’s eyes of slight panic and fear, had sent every alarm bell off in his head.

He found a side panel and checked. She was with him moving towards the _Enterprise_ dock.

_Wait...they’re going on board?_

He found his feet headed in that direction, one foot at a time, almost rushing. He noted pointedly that there was a sudden strange lightening of the air.

He made it into the docking port just in time to see with his eyes the soft subtle release of air jets from below the deck plating in the station. It wouldn’t affect the port itself, but he knew, in an instant…

_Gas!_

“Red alert!” he said immediately and the red lights came on and the klaxons sounded.

Hopefully that would help keep some people conscious a little while longer. He covered his face with his sleeve and rushed down the portway towards the ship. If the station was being gassed...then the ship was their target.

And he found Reginald Barclay, half conscious and disoriented in the doorway access, an injury on his head, being helped to his feet by two security guards.

“What happened Reg?”

“Oh my head,” he was very disoriented, and struggling to get to his feet. “I was with Gracie and the Brahms, we were walking and then...my head…”

“Reg, quick, your attackers, where did they go?” Geordi held him by the arm, feeling his stomach twisting in sudden understanding.

“Don’t know...I only remember being knocked out.”

“Computer, locate the Brahms and Lieutenant Lacell.”

“Professor Leah Brahms is in shuttlebay 2…Commander Brahms and Lieutenant Lacell are on route to engineering.”

“I’ll go after Leah Brahms,” said Geordi pointedly. “You two get to Engineering and stop those two…”

“Yes sir,” the security officers rushed off, and Barclay stood helplessly, leaning against the wall.

“She...she never really wanted me...did she Geordi?”

Laforge momentarily felt a feeling of looking in a mirror. A feeling of complete and utter understanding. Someone had been using the poor man, and he had been in that place before.

_But Leah doesn't want to be a part of whatever this is...He's forcing her, I just know it! I have to talk to her!_

He left Barclay at the intersection struggling to his feet and raced off towards shuttlebay 2, hoping it wasn’t too late.

\----------

He had been waiting patiently for the gas to fully disperse, watching anonymously from his console to see who would board the _Enterprise_ and who was staying behind. At the red alert he had started moving, following the remaining members of their Faction pointedly towards the back of the station.

It was a man and a woman, Rhymes and Lynch, he remembered, from the crew roster. But they were known to him and their Faction as Molecule and Atom, and the two of them were hard at work at a console, setting up a series of explosions that would destroy the station, and the _Enterprise_ as well.

“Excuse me…but I do believe you are not authorized to take such an action.”

Both of them got to their feet startled and Data quickly stunned them both with his phaser.

He pulled the woman up to look at her, waiting for her to regain her focus. Augments were very quick to recover, he had learned, and she was no exception.

“Who are you working for?”

She snarled “Get a life, tin man!” and tried to break loose.

“Who?!” he shook her, hard enough to rattle all the bones in her body.

“The _Children_ of _Khan_! The only _true_ leader of Earth! Now let me go, _Android_!”

He did as she requested, throwing her hard against a wall and knocking the wind out of her, then accessed the panel.

He couldn’t stop the explosions now. But he could minimize the damage by redirecting the energy. The explosions would be limited to the mostly uninhabited spaces where the party wasn’t taking place, but the ship would be dead in the water if they didn’t get free before then.

He had no choice but to send out a distress signal and then turned.

They both came at him at once. Really through, it was like children on a mother bear. He knocked them both out easily, took their watches from them, and then decided that it would be fitting to leave them locked in here, where the blast would, with quiet finality, prevent them from telling anyone what had actually happened.

Leaving people to die was more painfully easy than he could have ever thought...but there was nothing to be done now.

_We’ll take the blame for the explosion either way, just as the Children wanted. But I have to hurry now or I’ll be trapped here..._

He was almost to the _Enterprise_ when he saw her. Stumbling dizzily towards him in the thick fog of sedative gasses, arms outward in supplication.

“Da...ta…”

_Betazoids are partially resistant to neuro-sedatives...shit!_

“Deanna, I sent a distress signal, the _Enterprise_ is being stolen…” he wondered if any of this was making it through her fogged mind, feeling an agony to want to stay and help her, and a desperation to be free of the station as fast as possible. “Stay here and inform the crew once they regain consciousness.”

He lowered her to a plush foyer seat and she put her hand to her head in a disoriented way.

_Two minutes until the air is properly recycled, and the station personnel start regaining consciousness._

He hadn’t wanted to reverse course on the gas, but he couldn’t leave them here disoriented and unconscious...not with an explosion rigged to go off that had not been a part of the plan.

He made the access port, and stood by the door for a moment, thinking of his crew, on the station, and his team, on the ship, and considered. The doorway access panel was an accusation.

_“Dreamer...you need to consider the Alpha Quadrant…” Angel had been very gentle but very firm with her instructions. “What happens next, nobody can stop...you are the one person we can’t do this without…”_

Data quickly tapped in the codes needed to lock and seal the port from access by anyone else. His feet carried him into the port entry and along the ramp to the access tube, and once he had made it safely to the other side he sealed the _Enterprise_ from within. This was the point of no return. Nobody was leaving the _Enterprise_ now...or getting on board.

There was no going back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't come up with good code name for the two Children of Khan faction members, but they didn't matter, as they were one scene characters, so I decided to just use two names I knew I wasn't going to be using for anyone else at all that sounded kind of scientific. This is how I came up with things. I agonize over even the tiniest details.
> 
> Rhymes was originally going to be the name I gave Lacell and I realized I had been using a lot of R names for people, so changed it.


	4. A Flight Of Furies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Major CHARACTER DEATHS AHEAD! GRAPHIC VIOLENCE

The _Enterprise_ corridors were flashing with the red alert sirens as he moved silently along them. The skeleton crew on board consisted of about twenty security officers and ten other unknown personnel, most of them now likely focused around Engineering and the Bridge. He had been putting down shield spheres at every side access from the cargo bays and shuttle port to here, the main saucer, funneling the security where he wanted them to go. He quietly and stealthily made his way, feeling the ship’s length with his eyes, assessing its humming vibrations and mentally calculating its status of readiness simply from the sounds of humming electronics in the walls. The shields were having trouble, they wouldn’t be able to raise them fully, and he guessed it was due to remaining damage that had yet to be repaired from the last battle the ship had been a part of.

He knew starships. He knew the soft whispered sounds of their conduit fluids like life blood moving through piping, slipping through tubing and sliding along mechanism joints. He knew the smell of freshly cycled air, the smell of synthetic fiber and cotton in the flooring that wafted up with every foot fall. The taste of fresh oxygen from constantly cycling vents on his tongue.

He could taste the other chemicals in the air that told him the ship’s air systems had disconnected from the station, the traces of liquid precipitation as the atmospheric life support systems overcompensated slightly for changing temperatures and air currents.

This was his world. This was his life. Not the empty box of pain and tears he had been locked in for ten frustrating hopeless years. Not the tiny hull of a shuttlecraft with its confining space and its blinking darkness. Not a cargo ship with smells of grease and excess carbon. This...the beauty of the expansive corridors, the wide open rooms with their shiny metal magnetic doors, the open view ports out to the starfield…A starship was a floating city and its Captain was the mayor and every citizen on board was the essence of all that the ship embodied, the feeling of community ever present around every corner.

A security team came rushing around the corner suddenly, and Ultraviolet sprang to action, phasers drawn and feet launching him, propelling him forward towards the two men in a startled fury of blinding flashing heat and light.

Blood erupted from their twin chests, and he felt a fever of blood lust filling him, that energy that just didn’t come from using a stun setting or a disintegration. Watching the chest cavity open instantly and life’s precious liquid come rushing forward fulfilled in him a sick and twisted animalistic instinct that he had always hated and could not help but worship.

Human. It was a very _human_ thing to get a rise out of blood shed. Imperfect, and unengineered, a baser survival instinct he respected from humanity’s primitive roots. Klingons, perhaps, must have felt the same way about death.

The two bodies dropped heavily to the ground, and he observed for a moment their distant eyes. He and Angel had over prepared for this, maybe, but it was a good thing they had. Not for the second security team that came running with phasers blazing now alerted to his presence, those he also quickly dispatched and had no fear of.

No, it would be the other Factions who they would have to worry about now. Another Faction was present in this situation already, and a third may have been responsible for their current state of rushing into their previously slow and methodical plan. He was going to give the other Factions no quarter. The shuttlecraft of stolen weapons was only a sliver to what they had been stashing away on the now cloakless freighter, if they could get back to her before anyone discovered her. She was booby trapped to the nines to keep anyone from stealing her and her payload of weapons.

The turbolift was sealed, and he sighed, and considered taking the jefferies tubes instead. A security team was somewhere behind him and it would take time to reprogram the panel to open the door. A security team which was either coming towards him or headed the other way, and he considered waiting here for them.

The suddenly vibration and blinking amber light on his watch alerted him to the fact that his team was now greatly reduced. Two watches had been deactivated and Dreamer was now on board. He swallowed, wondering if Dreamer was the one to deactivate the watches. Was he, indeed their mole? Ultraviolet mentally shook his head. No, of those who had joined them, Dreamer had been the hardest to convince, to track down, to corner and cajole, and so he could not have been trying to infiltrate. Ultraviolet finally decided to force the doors of the turbolift open. Time was running out.

Emptiness. The turbolift was silent. He turned and looked down the hallway again. It had been long past the time for the security team to arrive, so they were headed to Engineering instead. He accessed the panel and called the turbolift and directed it for the bridge, quickly reprogramming it so that it couldn’t be stopped in its ascent by any third parties. Not until it reached its destination. Which also meant that it would reach the bridge whether he wanted it to or not. Rather than waiting for it to pass him, or trying to jump inside, he flung himself into the empty expanse of the turbolift tube and landed on the lift’s fast moving roof, feeling the sudden changing in air pressure, the vortex of wind and the transfer of energy from the turbolift to his body, propelling him forward. He opened the lift emergency access and dropped inside the lift, relieved that it was empty, and then readied himself to face off with with the bridge security team.

He didn’t know who was responsible for the betrayal, but there was one Faction member on the bridge, and hopefully luck was with him now and the mole was already dealt with, possibly by Dreamer...

_If not, Angel will deal with them, quickly enough._

\------------

Professor Leah Brahms looked out over the shuttlebay from the catwalk, tense and nervous, her entire body trembling. She knew her husband had been right to send her here, to meet up with the _Esther_ pair, she was safer here than possibly dealing with the security teams in Engineering. But she was feeling bereft of Michael’s presence, empty. The bond between them was feeling stretched, that chemical Augment bond that sometimes occurred during sex, that was almost impossible to break once in place, and was still telling her to be where he was. She waited, watching below her as the familiar form of Angel unloaded the supplies from the shuttle. Weapons, and the cloak, the all important cloak. She had been very relieved to see the person who recruited her was also the one waiting for her here.

_She can’t be the one who betrayed us...but then who?_

Her watch vibrated and she checked it immediately. Two black gems and one amber lit up. Dreamer was on board.

_The mole? Or were they the moles?_

The shuttle bay door opened behind her suddenly and she turned, startled, hands instinctively covering her stomach.

“Leah! What is going on?”

Commander Geordi Laforge was there. With a phaser, though he seemed reluctant to point it at her. He was there. For a moment, she was confused, he wasn’t on their team was he? If he wasn’t Dreamer, and Barclay wasn't Dreamer, who was?

Then she realized he couldn’t be an Augment, with his need for artificial eyes.

“Geordi?” she said, aghast. He’d boarded the ship to follow. He was supposed to still be on the station. “Did you _follow_ me?”

He’d followed her. She knew the answer before she’d even asked the question. He had followed her, followed her after she’d left him at the party with her husband. He’d followed her onto the ship, and had probably been the one to give the red alert. He had followed them and found Reginald Barclay. Her genetically engineered mind calculated all the probable scenarios and came up with the answer before he could even speak it even as she sidled along the railing to try and reach the stairway down.

He still _liked_ her. He was still obsessed. It was the only reason he would have followed her. They weren’t anything more than distant colleagues, right? She mentally went over all their past messages and her stomach sank and churned.

_Oh dear god, really?_

“Stop moving,” he warned her and she stopped. “And just tell me, tell me you aren’t actually stealing the ship?” he said, sounding a little bit, to her panicking mind, as if he was a little delusional. “He’s making you do this right? But...you don’t have to go through with it…Leah...”

 _Oh...my…god… He_ is _delusional!_

“Geordi…” she said, taking a deeply calming breath, and said, again, firmly. “Put down the phaser...”

If Angel hadn’t been alerted to how in danger Leah was before, she was now by the softly spoken comment. She could almost feel the other woman’s presence somewhere nearby, though Geordi should have seen her coming with his artificial eyes...unless.

Unless Angel has anticipated this and was planning on coming up from behind them. Geordi couldn’t rotate his vision behind himself. He was coming closer to her, his body parallel to hers, the phaser now pointed at her directly, and a hand out in entreaty.

Her Augment instincts were on overdrive to protect her child and herself from this extreme threat to their existence, even if it was Geordi, even if her mind did calculate he was on the lowest stun setting possible for his phaser. She felt her own hostility and fear rising and bubbling under the surface, ready to run.

“You need to come with me,” he said, looking reluctant to be keeping her at phaser point. “You’ll be alright, you’re pregnant, so that means you aren’t really...I mean in full capacity…”

“Oh hell, Geordi, really?” she was very close to losing her cool, properly angry now at his clear lack of understanding. “You really _are_ delusional. You want the truth?” she could feel they weren’t alone now. Behind him, on the stairway up to the catwalk, she could barely see Angel’s head rising up from below, she was a dark shadow moving stealthily towards them, one soft footpad at a time. “Yes we’re stealing the damned ship! Yes I’m helping! I made this ship, I designed her, _we_ designed her, the two of us, me and Michael, and nobody else knows this ship better than us!”

Her words had been calculated to upset him, to set him off balance so he wouldn’t realize he was about to be ambushed. She braced herself for his response.

“You have got to be kidding me?” he threw up his hands. “That is the most arrogant thing I’ve ever heard! And I thought you understood that Engineers have as much, or even more experience with ships, as the designers do! You’ve never been in the engine room when this ship has been in a battlefield! You’ve never had to deal with situations on the fly, you sit at a console designing, but what do you know about actually flying a starship? Huh? What does _he_ know about flying a starship?”

“You’d be surprised how much we actually fly and test our own designs before they ever make it into common usage,” she said harshly, trying not to dart her eyes to behind him, hoping that he couldn’t actually see movements that subtle. “And we do it _together_. Michael has _never_ had to force me or convince me to do anything. Helping them steal the ship was _our_ idea, both of us. Nobody is manipulating me. You are seeing what you want to see, and you need to get it through your head.”

Silence fell for a moment, and he seemed to be thinking, considering.

“Leah…” he shook his head. “Why? I just...you know how I’ve felt about you. And I can’t...you’re the most important designer we have...so why? Why are you doing this?”

She knew the moment Angel was ready to spring, and she calculated, in her mind, the likelihood of her old friend surviving…guilt momentarily finding a sore spot in her already volatile mind.

_No, not your friend, he’s been stalking you all these years...remember the baby...your baby, Michael’s baby._

“Geordi...I’m doing this to give my baby the life I couldn’t have...a life without hiding. A life the Federation cannot give us. And a life you were not _ever_ going to be a part of.”

And then Angel struck, leaping from the railing screaming, phaser rifle blazing and causing Geordi to turn in response with his phaser, too late.

Leah had just two seconds to recognize the outcome as blood, red, thick, in large globs, flung across the air between them from the gaping hole in his torso and splattered across her agonized face.

\--------

“Sorry,” Angel pocketed her phaser and put a hand out towards the other woman. “Are you all right? I’ll take you to the infirmary so you can clean up.”

“I’m fine…we don’t have time...” the woman called Clover rubbed her face on her sleeve, and Angel had to hand it to her, she was recovering quick from the shock. “I am just totally freaked out. He’s been stalking me...I just realized it now. Stalking me. In this day and age? I can’t believe that. I just can’t…”

Angel felt a moment of confusion. Social situations were not her forte, she had always been more of an introvert. But she could see the horror and confusion in the other woman’s face as she contemplated the body and on the blood on her hands and face, and there was a welling of dampness in the eyes that probable was more than a little warranted and acceptable by far in this situation. 

“He’s not gonna bother you anymore girl,” Angel put a hand out and Clover came over and accepted the offer of a shoulder to lean on. “Lets get you and the others some weapons, and grab the cloak and I’ll bring you to Engineering. Our family needs to be together.”

“Family,” she seemed to taste the word, test it, and she smiled, genuinely, a final understanding in the chaos of her mind being reached. “Yes, lets go find Michael. He is going to flip out completely when he sees me covered in blood.”

_Who wouldn’t?_

\--------

“Detecting phaser fire on board the ship Captain,” said Deanna Troi, looking down at the panel in front of her as they worked, inputting instructions and further updates into the distress signal from her console whilst he worked away at his own.

She had waited until her head had cleared, and then had located the Captain and pulled him physically to his feet, carrying the still unconscious man over to the nearest control panels, which fortunately had stationary stools for them to sit on while they worked. Now they were both leaning against them, as he input his command codes to try and stop whatever it was that was happening on the ship.

Her mind, though, was in chaos. She had felt a lot of fear and panic from Geordi only moments ago. Now there was nothing. Not even a breath of his mind on hers. Was he unconscious? She rarely felt anything from someone who was unconscious, but she did feel something...the distance would often play tricks on her.

“I can’t do anything about the _Enterprise_ itself, but I can lock the station couplers…” he did so, and shivered. “They won’t be able to go anywhere without ripping the station apart. Not that it matters, this place is about to explode...we need to move everyone we can here to this main deck where there’ll be less destruction and a greater chance of survival...computer, begin teleporting all station personnel to the main deck on my mark, from youngest to oldest. Mark.”

The computer would be awhile at it. A lot of the station’s residents had gone to their quarters to drink with friends, or loitered inside hallways. The celebration had really scattered them about.

“Computer, estimated time until explosion,” Picard didn’t wait for the response, working quickly now to try and find a different way for them off this station. They could not access the ship from the entry ports.

“We could shuttle over,” Deanna suggested hopefully.

“It would take too long...we have to stop the ship, whether or not the station and the ship get destroyed in the process. Who knows what they’ll do with the ship once they have it? Are they Dominion? Or one of the Factions we’ve been worried about?”

“Faction, I’m guessing,” she said, hoping they could stop the ship before anyone was killed. “I don’t think the Dominion would send more than one Changeling to cause trouble. And they certainly don’t need any of our ships...theirs are strategically stronger.”

“Ah, but the new engine designs could prove a temptation…”

“I do know I sense some strong minds at work on the ship, though it's hard to tell whose, they are advanced enough to keep their minds mostly closed to me.”

Other officers were stumbling over to them now, and Deanna was blessedly relieved that Data had sent a distress signal before going on board. He was there, somewhere, and he had a chance to stop the thieves...somehow.

All communications to and from the ship had been blocked. But when she searched for his mind, like Commander Laforge, he was a blank, empty, not even there.

If Data was gone, all was lost.

\--------

The bridge was silent. The lights of the bridge consoles blinked cheerfully, welcomingly. The bodies of several security guards and a single female ensign lay prone on the ground nearby, but he had not been the one to dispatch them. Only one person was with him, a man sitting at the helm, quietly tapping in codes. If he was alarmed by the presence of the other person, he hadn’t shown it in the slightest.

Ultraviolet calmly plod down the side of the bridge, feeling his blood pounding, his lungs filling with the metallic post-phaser fire air, his heart up at its rightful place in his chest, his shoulders high. The view screen showed the station in front of them, flashing with emergency lights, and he considered it for a moment. The shields weren’t working well, but were working just enough to keep the crew from beaming on board. So were they now rolling down the hallways in large groups to retake the ship?

He didn’t believe so. He was certain Dreamer had sealed the ship after boarding. He considered the other Augment on the bridge calmly, carefully. 

“Are we free yet of the station?”

“Negative…” said Jeeves, barely moving a hair as he responded to the comment. “The magnetic couplers have been encrypted by the station personnel, I am unable to remove the locks…”

Ultraviolet considered this, and calculated, from the man’s quick tapping, what he was trying to accomplish.

_I can do nothing...everything now depends on Dreamer and the Engineering team._

“Set the ship’s engines to go to impulse the moment we’re free of the magnetic couplers…then increase speed afterwards until we’re at maximum warp.”

_I’m not going to destroy my own prize...I’ll be patient, and give my team a chance to show me what they can do…_

But still, he was here, on the _Enterprise_ bridge, the command ship of the United Federation of Planets. Whether they succeeded, or died here, he had achieved the number one personal goal of this entire mission that he had set for himself.

With a release of relieved breath he sat down in the Captain’s chair and stretched out his legs, pressed his back against the cool leather back, and grasped the arm rests with his hands.

For the moment, this was his ship, and he was its Captain. For this moment in time, he was home.

And he smiled.

\--------

_“Estimated time to the arrival of Cairo, three hours...estimated time to Destiny arrival, twenty minutes…”_

The ship seemed delighted by its own words, to her confused mind. She carefully watched Thistle...Michael Brahms...wondering what he would do next. He was studying the console in front of them with a look of pure fury. Scarlett could only feel utter misery. Two of theirs on the station were down, everyone else was on board, the station residents were starting to regain consciousness and there was a very strong magnetic coupler connected to their hull that none of them now had the ability to remove. Not even Reginald Barclay’s codes could have uncoupled them. But at least now they knew why their timetable had been sped up.

_And at least I don’t have to use that awful fake name anymore..._

But Counselor Deanna Troi had been smart enough to revive her Captain first, and his first duty was to lock the ship in place and keep it from going anywhere. With no sign that the other Augment was going to take any action, Scarlett stalked over to the main control chip board and began frantically pulling out programming chips to try and disable the magnetic couplers on board.

“We’re not going anywhere without ripping apart the station at best, or us at worse,” Brahms said. “Scarlett! Stop it! That is useless!”

“Well I’m sorry!” she said, responding to her chosen code name immediately. “Someone on the station decided to rig the place to explode! And _someone_ decided to recycle the oxygen instead of leaving the crew unconscious!”

“And someone is going to prison very very shortly!”

Scarlett jumped to her feet at the same time that Thistle whirled, and she noted momentarily the phaser in Reginald Barclay’s hands, pointed at her, and ducked just as he fired, sending the chip panel behind her into a blast of shocking light.

_Oh god, now we’re dead!_

Thistle leapt over the island console station like a bat out of hell, grabbing the startled Engineer by his head, and then twisting with his body, whirling the man around like a rag doll and snapping him, hard across the nearest wall.

The cracking sound of bones breaking caused her to stop, in all motion, and gasp, horror filing her stomach and bile rising into her throat.

They had only stunned the security team. She had _hoped_ his phaser had been set on stun. Hers has been.

_He’s dead...Reginald Barclay...he’s dead…he’s dead...oh god he’s dead!_

She was staring at the man’s dead body and shaking in terror, even as Thistle advanced on her aggressively.

“This ship is no longer controllable from Engineering,” he said pointedly, indicating the sparking circuit board behind her. “Snap out of whatever it is that is bothering you, or he will be quite right, and I promise you prison for Augments is not exactly a pleasant low security penal colony in New Zealand!”

Swallowing her pride, and feeling herself mentally falling apart as she put together her plan for going forward, she turned to look at the circuit panel.

“Without command control, we can’t even transfer access to the bridge...we’re done.”

“Computer,” a calm voice said. “Uncouple space station docking clamps, authorization code Picard nine seven gamma.”

The two Augments turned stunned, and Scarlett had never ever been so relieved in her life when the _Enterprise_ computers sprung to life and the ship was suddenly lurching forward at impulse, free from the tight embrace of the magnetic couplers.

“Computer,” the voice changed, back to the owner’s original voice. “Transfer all control of engineering to the bridge, authorization code Data eight two two epsilon, enable…”

“What…?” said Thistle quietly. “But…”

_Of course! Only me and Jeeves knew which Enterprise crew member was Dreamer! How would they have guessed that an Android was helping Augments?_

_“Transfer could not be completed,"_ said the computer. _“Engineering transfer must be completed manually.”_

 _Okay…_ thought Scarlett, as Data approached the chip panel. _Now we’re screwed._

“Find an empty box,” he said to her calmly as Thistle continued to gape. “We’ll have to transfer the chips physically…”

“That will take hours!” said Thistle, remembering himself finally.

“It will take me approximately twenty minutes...unless you delay me any further…”

Fortunately, they didn’t have to worry too much about it. Someone on the bridge had input the command necessary to go to warp, and the ship’s engines, powering up to high velocity, kicked suddenly into gear, pulling them away so fast they barely had time to clear the dock before the first of the station explosions rocked them forward and barely nicked the edge of their retreating nacelles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may do some edits of previous chapters. I made all these code names for the Faction members and dangit! I want to use them! But it could be confusing I guess. The factions use one word names for themselves to not only protect their identity, to make it fast and easy to communicate. So briefly, since we'll be with them for awhile, a list for your convenience;
> 
> Ultraviolet - Samuel Morgan  
> Angel - Sala Gabriel  
> Dreamer - Data  
> Thistle - Michael Brahms  
> Clover - Leah Brahms  
> Scarlett - Gracie Lacelle (not her real name)  
> Jeeves - Helmsman (I forgot the name I used for him, I'm now embarrassed as heck.)  
> Raptor - Remina (bet you forgot about her :P )
> 
> Also the two infiltrators, which made ten, and there's twelve points on a watch face. Ultraviolet left room for potential recruits. :P


	5. Sibling Rivalry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the longest chapter I've made so far, but I couldn't really find any way to make it shorter, so you get the full monty. :) Enjoy

Silence. The gentle sounds of soft breathing. The warmth of the blankets, the soft duvet his lover had insisted was preferable to the cold of the station. The heat of breath on his skin, familiar and rhythmic, their limbs quietly woven together. The artificial sound of station functions in the walls pumping and humming in their familiar rhythms. The twinkling lights of the starfield outside their window.

_“At every moment the Prophets are speaking to us, commanding us, bringing us into focus. Kaj, you must rise, hurry!”_

Julian Bashir blinked his eyes vaguely open, and breathed deeply for a moment, trying to keep his breathing so even as to not disturb his husband in the slightest sense. Songbird’s chest was still rising steadily, but two Augments, bonded, were like twin souls that couldn’t be divided, and it wouldn’t be long before the other Augment realized his partner was awake and woke up himself.

_Kai Opaka?_

He hadn’t heard her voice since before the fiery trial of the Pah-Wraiths in the Fire Caves on Bajor, when he started planning his manic revenge against Gul Dukat. But that had been almost two weeks ago. Now he was groggily sitting up, and Songbird was moaning softly and rousing.

_“No time Kaj, up, hurry and dress…”_

To his own surprise, he did, Songbird sitting up in bed with a moan as Julian left the warmth of the sheets. Songbird was rubbing his face blurrily, confusion fogging his eyes, and immediately Julian felt that the answer to his lover’s distress was as simple as crossing the boundary between him and the side unit by the closet to pick up Kukalaka from the display and present to the sleepy singer.

“Kaj business luv, go back to sleep…”

“Oh, hon, your bear?” Songbird hugged the bear to his chest smiling. “Thank you. But the Prophets shouldn’t wake people at 2 am…”

Julian wondered calmly and rationally what could cause Kai Opaka to be so stressed as he showered, shaved and quickly pulled on his uniform. She was still on a planet in the Gamma Quadrant, wasn’t she?

He was barely out of his quarters when Major Kira’s voice came suddenly over the station speakers.

“Attention! All Bajoran personnel assigned to the _Boryhas_ report immediately to the docking bay, we will be launching immediately!” Her voice was hard and tense and he could tell that she was anxious.

Julian would not have heard that message from inside his quarters. Yellow alert situation announcements were limited to the corridors only. He also wasn’t assigned to _Boryhas_ as of yet, but he immediately tapped his combadge.

“Bashir to Kira, I’m already dressed and on my way, report the situation…?”

“Station 41 has been knocked out by explosions and is adrift. The station residents are now in a critical situation. I can wait five minutes for you...”

“Beam aboard those emergency medical supplies I had set aside in cargo bay five…” There were about five hundred emergency respirators in one of the supply crates meant for use in Bajoran hospitals. He guessed the station residents would be losing oxygen fast. “I’m heading straight to the docking bay.”

“It's a good thing you were already up, though to be honest, you really shouldn’t even be going into Federation space…we still don’t know what the legal fallout could be.”

“The patients matter more than the politics as far as I’m concerned” Julian replied, and mentally smiled. _But yes...it's a good thing I did get up. Thank you, Kai Opaka._

\----------

“Are you all right sir?”

Captain Jean-Luc Picard pushed himself calmly to his feet, accepting the hand up from Captain Riker, whose face was a mask of smoldering rage. His sooty uniform was the perfect costume for such a fiery visage, and for a moment he looked carved from the very depths of hell itself. There was no sign of the winsome and wry man that he knew Riker was.

“The explosions took out almost a quarter of the station,” Riker said. “And oxygen is escaping into space. I’ve already set emergency teams to repairing the damage. But _Enterprise_ is gone.”

“We’ll get her back,” Picard said, brushing off the soot from his own jacket.

He mentally checked over himself; physically he was fine despite the vibrating deck plating underneath him. Mentally he was just as severely rattled as the station, despite having been through as many explosions and crashes as any ship Captain would have to have to reach that rank. But he couldn’t fathom what the numbers of dead could be...his brain was fried. Nearby Counsellor Troy was leaning against a console, looking none the worse for the wear, if a little smoke smudged. She got up to follow them as they passed her.

The main deck was a chaos of fire and debris. Panels and support beams had fallen onto their heads from above, and there was broken glass under their feet from broken consoles and smashed display panels. A large hole in the station viewports alerted him that the ship’s shield generators were holding, thank heavens, and so were the forcefields, or else they all would have been blown out into space. Artificial gravity was still being maintained. People were now working to remove debris, fallen walls and support beams from off of their comrades. Picard recognized a red head under a large metal piece of roof sheeting and rushed forward, Riker and him both taking the sheet by their hands and manually lifting it, while Troi pulled Doctor Crusher out from underneath.

“Beverly…”

She didn’t respond to her name. Picard felt dread and fear filling him at the sight of her unconscious state, her ripped uniform, her bleeding head...Troi put her hand on the wound and compressed, silently crying and trying to put on a brave face.

_Merde...sweet mercy, please let her live..._

“Sir,” an ensign had come over. “The _Destiny_ is arriving now sir…”

Picard looked up at Riker, who looked down at him, and their shared time and experience told them both everything they needed to know.

“Counsellor you are in command here...Ensign, inform the _Destiny_ we’ll be coming aboard immediately by shuttlecraft. We are not going to let them get away with the _Enterprise_ , not by a long shot!”

“Yes sir!”

“Time is of the essence,” Picard said, and Riker followed him in the direction of the shuttle bay. Fortune was with them, there was one shuttle still left undamaged by the explosion. “We can’t let an enemy get their hands on the _Enterprise_...we force them to surrender, or destroy the ship. Even if we have to destroy our own ship in the process.”

“The _Destiny_ is the sister ship of Enterprise, the same design, and the same capabilities…” Riker said. “Hopefully that will give us an advantage…”

“Sorry Will, but I’ll be taking command of your new vessel...” he shared a wry smile with his former First Officer, the two of them sharing a moment of good humor in this dark situation.

“Try not to scratch the paint,” Riker replied.

\-----------

Programming chips were flying through the air when Angel arrived, cloaking device flung over her shoulder, and one arm hooked into Clover’s elbow, feeling the other woman shaking and quivering. The temperature on the ship was dropping fast.

“Leah...oh my god Leah!” Thistle rushed over to them from where he had been standing at a console.

“It's not mine,” the woman said calmly of the blood on her face, on her shirt, on her hands. “I’m all right, it's just getting really cold in here…”

“We’re losing systems as he’s pulling them,” said Thistle angrily, pointing at the frenzied form of Dreamer. “We’re leaking plasma from our starboard nacelle and we have to move the controls for everything to the bridge…by hand!”

Angel mentally calculated everything she was seeing, mentally assessed the situation, and decided on a course.

“Take the cloak and start setting it up…” she said, handing the device over to the man without asking his input. “I’ll be in the torpedo bay...”

“The torpedo bay?” Thistle took the cloak but he looked like he was ready to throw in the towel and quit. “What are you going to do without the controls? It's going to take some time...”

“Eighteen minutes, twenty two seconds!” Dreamer clarified for them.

Suddenly they had come out of warp into impulse power. The ship was slowing down to a crawl. Dreamer had pulled the warp drive command chips.

“I can wait, what I have planned will take time,” Angel replied, and turned to leave just as Dreamer had pulled the last chip and speedy Scarlett had caught it in her basket, as she had been doing all the others.

_I guess that’s one way to do it..._

“Hurry,” the android said fiercely, running ahead of Scarlett towards the turbolift and forcing the Augment woman to keep his pace, which was blistering.

Angel hoped he remembered she was not as fast as an android, but decided to keep her own pace slow and calm. The weapons systems would need to be reinstalled on the bridge before they could fire the torpedoes, but she had some ideas about how she now wanted to fill the torpedo casings they had available, and calculated how many crewmen were probably left alive on the ship.

A torpedo volley with living bodies inside would hopefully keep their pursuers slightly off balance. After all, Ultraviolet had told her to take no prisoners, and she wasn’t going to start now.

\-----------

Ensign Ezri Tigan lifted her head in concern as the two Captains bounded onto the bridge, Commander Tucksley looking somewhat put out for a moment as he stood to his feet.

“I’m taking over command of the _Destiny_. Helm, turn control over to Captain Riker,” said Captain Picard. “And take over the empty ops…”

“Yes sir,” she said, looking concerned as their new Captain, a ranking officer, took the helm control instead of his new chair.

“Relax,” Riker told her with a rakish smile. “I’ve been told I’m one of the better pilots out there.”

“The best, and we aren’t dealing with any ordinary ship thieves,” Picard stood back and sat down in the Captain’s chair. “Set a pursuit course with the _Enterprise_ , and match their speed. Also,” he paused to consider, looking at Ezri for a moment and potentially noticing her blue uniform. “My apologies to everyone, this is rather unorthodox, but according to procedure I am the higher ranked Captain, and we cannot let them escape with a top of the line ship.”

“Understood sir,” she took over the ops station as indicated, feeling momentarily disoriented.

She did know and understand the command functions of the ops terminal, she was a Starfleet graduate after all, but she had majored in counselling and was still in field training. She wondered if another officer should take her place.

“I think you’ve thoroughly confused our helmsman,” Commander Tucksley chuckled. “Tigan, estimated time until we catch up with them?”

“About twenty four minutes if they maintain this speed…” she said, relieved that someone was calm in this situation.

“Not fast enough,” Picard said immediately. “Damn…How long until _Cairo_ reaches the space station?”

“One hour...but we’re getting a message from space station Deep Space Nine…” Ezri tapped her console. “A Bajoran relief ship is on route to the station and will be arriving in fifteen minutes.”

“Oh thank god,” said Riker. “They must have gotten the distress signal.”

“Yes sir,” Ezri looked back over her shoulder. “What are we going to do when we reach them? We only have one working torpedo bay and our phasers were taken offline in preparation for the upgrades.”

Captain Picard’s eyebrows went right up to his balding pate and Captain Riker laughed.

“I guess we should have asked what condition the ship was in before commandeering it,” he said.

“We do have working shields, we started repairing those first…” she offered helpfully.

Hopefully.

“We’ll delay them as long as possible,” Picard stated at last, the lines of his face telling her that every inch of him was tightly wound, ready to spring into action. “And hope that other ships in the area got the distress signal and are moving in now to intercept.”

\---------

Silence. A stillness of breathing. A sleeping moment where nothing was happening. Then a sudden light flashed in her eyes and phaser fire was exchanged.

She was surprised that her opponent had only stunned her. So far the invaders had been using more deadly methods.

“Up,” said her attacker quickly. “Get up…”

Guinan winced, putting her hand on her ribs, and did as she was told. Well, she had tried to make a stand, the other four people who had been hiding in the bar with her were unconscious on the floor. She hoped they were _just_ unconscious. She couldn’t be sure.

“I’ve calculated that I only have time to collect one more person for my torpedo trick...so guess what. It's your lucky day. You get to live a little bit longer. Move...slowly.”

Guinan spared a miserable look towards the two people on the ground, possibly already dead, and guessed that she must have rolled a bad number, or she’d have gone to the party instead of holding up in isolation in her quarters. ‘Torpedo trick’ did not sound like it was going to be pleasant, not by any stretch.

But then again, she’d always had these little instinctual advantages that often warned her of future events to come. A feeling of caution had followed her all week coming up to the arrival at the station, and she had been in a very cautious mood, trying to convince as many people as possible to stay on the ship, to no avail.

She wondered, with sickening panic, what had happened to those that had left the ship.

\---------

Ultraviolet looked up from the ops console as Dreamer and Scarlett bounded onto the bridge at high speed, the android’s face a mask of emotionless concentration. Scarlett was looking winded completely, so he addressed the android.

“How long until all the systems are back online?” he asked, and rose to his feet.

“Fifteen minutes…” said Dreamer, as he grabbed the floor plating with his hands and ripped it free, flinging it to the side. “Twenty one seconds…”

“The shields are now offline, the cloak is now being installed...” Jeeves said.

“Bring weapons back online first, Dreamer, then shields. Warp can wait...” Ultraviolet moved over to the security station to check in with Angel.

“Angel, how long until you can release the prisoners…?”

“Release the prisoners?” said Scarlett, startled, but Ultraviolet didn’t have time to inform her of Angel’s new battle plan, Dreamer had dropped down inside the guts of the bridge and she hastened to follow him down with the basket of chips in her hand. 

“Whenever we’re ready…” said Angel’s voice.

“Maintain impulse power on this course,” he said to Jeeves. “And prepare to launch the torpedoes as soon as the weapons are online…”

_Lets just hope they stop for their people...Otherwise, without shields and a damaged nacelle we’re just sitting ducks..._

\---------

“Estimated time to intercept?”

“Five minutes.”

“Status of phaser array?”

“Almost back on line,” Ezri Tigan was feeling that she was getting used to ops, and glad that Riker was in fact, a very good pilot.

The other ship was travelling at impulse now, and they could gain them in seconds at warp, but Picard had chosen to maintain speed with the other ship. He was being cautious with this action, preparing for potential sudden changes in the other ship’s course and speed.

“We have five minutes to get ourselves ready to go to battle,” said Picard. “Ideas? Thoughts?”

“I suggest we take the unimportant systems offline to put more energy into the shields,” said Commander Tucksley immediately. “And phasers.”

“I agree,” said Riker, tapping at his console, and showing that he was very much a pilot, he was very comfortable in his chair.

“We should save the torpedoes for a single salvo to a vulnerable point,” said their security chief, Nickson.

“The warp core,” said Riker immediately. “Or the nacelles, they may have taken damage in the explosion as they escaped.”

“All good ideas. Let’s do it…”

“Two minutes…”

“Enterprise is now in visual range…”

“On screen!”

The ship was whirring away from them, neither slowing down nor showing any sign of stopping.

“One minute until we’re in firing range…”

“Hail them,” said Picard...and sat back in his chair.

Silence.

“They are not responding sir.”

“Ready phasers, target their starboard nacelle…”

Before they could fire, the ship suddenly shot out a series of photon torpedoes towards them, her monitor gave a bleep she almost didn’t understand.

“Target phasers to destroy those torpedoes!”

“Wait!” Ezri said in alarm. “Captain, I’m detecting lifesigns! There’s people in those torpedoes!”

The torpedoes were approaching quickly.

“Are you certain?”

“I can confirm, detecting all three torpedoes are showing life signs,” said Tucksley. “Good catch Ezri. We can slow down, and remote disable the explosives, but it’ll take us off course…”

Ezri felt for a moment Captain Picard’s indecision and misery, and Riker seemed to realize this.

“How much oxygen do they have on board?”

“Enough for an hour at best…”

They were almost in direct contact with the torpedoes. Ezri turned to look at Picard pointedly, knowing exactly what his decision was going to be, and feeling sorry for him with every fiber of her being.

“Sir,” she said, knowing it was futile. “They could give us more information about what is happening on that ship…”

“They could,” said Picard ironically, his voice turning momentarily soft. “But that ship can destroy thousands of people’s lives in an instant. Evade the torpedoes, and stay on course.”

“Aye Captain,” said Riker, his voice was heavy with the weight of the command decision.

As a Captain, he understood. Ezri felt her chest hurt for them, and for the people in the torpedoes. The weight of a command decision like that was not one she ever wanted to have to make in her entire life.

\---------

“Captain, the _Destiny_ didn’t stop to intercept the torpedoes…” came the voice of Jeeves. “They are still in pursuit.”

_Well...they’re more ruthless than I was expecting..._

“Thistle, estimated time until the cloak can be brought online?”

“We’re still waiting for the shields to come back online...” came the brusk and immediate reply. “We’ll have to keep them to a quarter power as we work…”

They were keeping all internal communications online, so he could hear all the conversations going on everywhere on the ship and give commands at an instant.

“Dreamer, how long until the shields are back online?”

“Six minutes…”

Angel was now on her way back to the bridge. The cloak was taking some time to install and the _Destiny_ was just seconds away, and would immediately launch an attack. Their shields down, their nacelle leaking into space...was this how they were going to die?

“Hail them,” he said. “Show them only me, nothing else on the bridge...let's give them a distraction.”

He was mentally counting down the time to full shields and was relieved when the channel immediately opened between them and the bridge of the _Destiny_ came onto the viewscreen.

_Five minutes..._

“Captain Picard and...helmsman Riker?” he almost had to laugh, especially at seeing their immediate twin looks of disconcertion. “Starfleet really is low on resources if they have to resort to putting two captains on the same ship...”

“And you sir?” said Picard angrily, interrupting him. “So bold to steal my ship, to destroy so many lives…?”

“Ultraviolet light can only be seen in the darkness…” said he, feeling a moment of resolute calm. 

“Ultraviolet is it?” said Riker, curiously. “I thought it was Morgan…”

Clever. But he remained calm and composed. He still had them on the screen, and he would not take the bait. Not when they had already taken his.

_Three minutes._

“The point is moot Captain, this ship is mine by whatever name I choose. If you destroy us now, or not, it will still be mine until its bitter end...and you will make _martyrs_ of us for the Factions to rally behind. Uniting them more thoroughly than we could ever hope for. But revenge and the destruction of the Federation is highly unnecessary, certainly not, so I would consider your next action very carefully...you may not like what results _either_ way.”

He was bluffing, and mentally counting down the seconds until the shields were back online.

_One minute…_

“What your Faction has done here is unnecessarily bloody, violent, and far away will not be tolerated.”

“Captain, I don’t expect you to tolerate us, nor do I plan on explaining my actions and motives to you. I am, however, out of time now, and I shall have to bid you farewell...screen off.”

 _The Destiny_ appeared on his screen, beautiful, the silver twin to their current vessel, and its weapons systems had already begun powering up in response to the cut off connection.

“Shield generators are back online,” said Jeeves.

“Raise shields!”

And just like that, battle was joined, and now the sister ships were both evenly matched.

\-----------

“A distraction,” Riker said, as the screen went black and _the Enterprise_ shields were raised.

“Sensor scans show seven and a half lifesigns on board...” said Ezri, and she felt the confusion of the others pointedly. “I can’t detect any specific individuals, they are blocking our scan.”

“Lets not give them more time, fire phasers,” said Picard.

Their phasers struck the _Enterprise_ across her bow, and the other ship returned fire, causing their ship to shake.

“Shields are holding. They’re returning fire…”

“Evade fire...”

The new Captain of _Destiny_ immediately put in a rather unique rotation maneuver that dodged the returning fire and prevented the other ship from getting a clear target. The _Destiny_ sheared sideways around the _Enterprise_ as the other ship rotated, keeping the warp nacelles away from their firing range.

“They must have realized their vulnerability. Target their shields...lets work on weakening their defenses first.”

The deck shook with another shared round of phaser fire. And then another fan of torpedoes came at them and she hastened to scan them for life before they destroyed them. But it was likely, even if there had been living passengers on board, they wouldn’t be letting a single torpedo strike their hull. This battle was too important to lose.

“Keep at them, we need a clear shot at their nacelles…”

Ezri felt her stomach shaking as she scanned and kept her focus, but the man at helm and the man in the chair were the only two real active parties...Nickson was returning phaser fire at command but he was clearly not in the driver’s seat, and neither was Commander Tucksley.

Captain Picard’s face was one of firm concentration. Tigan watched him for a moment feeling useless, and swallowed, and it was in that moment he gave a strange order.

“Riker, take command for a moment…”

“Yes sir, targeting their starboard shield generator…”

Ezri watched as the celebrated Captain of the _Enterprise_ closed his eyes, and focused his attention, and for a moment, nothing.

Then she saw it, his mouth moved, forming words, the smallest of whispers…

“Data…Data, can you hear me?”

And suddenly she knew, this battle was now taking place in more than one arena, and all she could do was concentrate on _this_ arena, and hope that the person on the other side of the battlefield replied.

And she hoped that their response was positive.

\-----------

Scarlett couldn’t do much more than brace herself against the jolts of _Destiny_ ’s phaser shots on their hull as Dreamer blindingly put one chip after another into the auxiliary chip board below the main bridge deck. Who designed this ship so that the chips would have to be transferred to the bridge if the Engineering chipboard went offline?

_The Brahms, obviously…they designed everything on this ship._

It was supposed to be a security feature, logically she knew it, as a precaution from the same malfunction happening twice in the same place and disabling the ship entirely. And there weren’t many places on a ship big enough for a chip board as wide as the bridge viewscreen itself. Underneath it, within close distance of the command center of the ship, was an amazing choice. But she was feeling _useless_ here just holding the box with the chips up as they moved along the board together.

Dreamer had started working on the life support systems now, she was relieved when the frigid air began to rise in temperature. On the bridge she could hear Ultraviolet snapping out quick commands, the ship lurching and turning, the twin ships in a deadly dance, and she imagined them briefly as sisters arguing as to who was the favorite child.

Dreamer began putting the chips in for the warp drive, one of the last few systems still offline, and she was relieved that they were almost done here, putting her hand to her chest.

And then he paused. And stopped in his tracks. His eyes for a moment looked confused. Inward focused. And his mouth dropped open in an expression of what could only be horror.

“Dreamer?” she said, and recognized, suddenly, that something was really, really wrong. “Dreamer, why did you stop?”

“One moment, stand by,” his head tilted to the side, and his face momentarily looked distant, artificial, emotionless. The person of Dreamer was gone and in a brief moment he was an android, Data.

“Dreamer, the warp drive!”

The android immediately snapped back up and started moving again, chips flying into their slots.

“What happened?” she asked, not needing to ask if he was back to normal.

“I was just shutting down an unnecessary connection…” he said, though she could hear the strain and pain in his voice. “Time to complete the computer chip transfer is now three minutes…”

She breathed a sigh of relief, and held the basket out to him. If she was right, the connection he had terminated was the last link he had with his former crew, and she couldn’t be more relieved by his decision to cut off that line once and for all.

And the result, the coming online of the _Enterprise_ warp drive with a bright triumphant hum, spoke for itself.

\-----------

Captain William Riker stood to his feet startled when Captain Picard suddenly lurched out of his chair and put his hands to his head, gasping.

“Will...Will...I…I can’t...”

He grimaced, his face a mask of pain and fear, and collapsed, and Riker rushed over immediately. Ensign Tigan was already getting on her knees beside him to check his pulse.

“Riker to sick bay, emergency team needed on the bridge!” Unphased, he sat back at helm and Tucksley took over the empty spot at ops. “We’re losing crew fast and we didn’t have many left to lose!”

“Shields are down 40%,” said Nickson.

“Target those four torpedoes at their damaged nacelle and fire as soon as you have line of sight!” he said.

“We are down to this last shot,” said Nickson. “Ready to fire torpedoes…”

“They’re moving in a defensive pattern again, keeping their nacelles away from us…” said Tucksley. “Coming about…they are targeting our shields, one more blast and we’ll lose them!”

The entire ship shook and rattled with the expected phaser blast.

“Shields are _down_ sir,” said Tucksley.

This was it.

“Sir, I’m detecting a rise in tachyons…” said Tucksley suddenly.

Riker felt his heart rising suddenly back into its proper place in his chest with the rising tachyon levels.

“A ship is decloaking between us and the _Enterprise_!” said Nickson.

“Sir...it's the _Defiant!_ ”

Riker watched as the tough little ship took the phaser blast that was meant for their hull and positioned itself to take any others that might be sent. They were saved...saved by a hair.

\-------

“Captain, the _Destiny’s_ shields are down, they can’t take another hit...”

Captain Benjamin Sisko was standing on his feet as he looked across the battlefield, feeling the blast of the phasers against their own shields like a shoulder was brushing past. _Defiant_ was built to be tough, she could take it, but the _Enterprise_ was now compensating to rotate around them, keeping its damaged nacelle away from their weapons and away from the _Destiny_. The nacelle was their vulnerability, but if the _Defiant_ moved to target the nacelles they would have to leave the _Destiny_ exposed and vulnerable to a further attack.

“The _Destiny_ has torpedoes targeted on the _Enterprise_ …” Worf said.

“Lets see if we can turn the enemy around properly so that _Destiny_ can fire…” he sat back down in his chair. “Helm, maneuver Sisko sixteen…”

The _Defiant_ blistered around the hull of the _Enterprise_ , swirling towards the back, forcing the other ship to turn its prone side towards the _Destiny_. Four torpedoes launched from the battered starship and Sisko had the satisfaction of seeing them make their mark.

“Direct hit,” said Worf from the weapons station, pumping his fist.

“Their starboard nacelle is now disabled…” said Dax. “They’re moving all their power into their weapons now.”

The _Enterprise_ whirled around again, and Defiant maneuvered once more between them and the _Destiny_ just as another full powered phaser blast smashed into their shields. The deck shook and the ship pitched sideways from the powerful shot, but Sisko felt that fortune was turning in their favor.

“Their shields are weak, fire at will, commander…”

A flash of torpedo fire and phaser blasts followed and the air crackled with the intense energy. The _Enterprise_ hull was bruised, battered, and for one moment, as their phasers pummeled its surface in a fury of red fire it was little more than a shot of silver and red in the darkness of space.

And in the next, astonishing moment, the _Enterprise_ was gone...and there was nothing there.

For a startled moment...silence.

“Captain...I don’t believe this,” said O’Brien. “But they’ve just cloaked!”

“That’s why their shields were low,” said Cadet Nog, his face completely alarmed. “They were installing a cloaking device!”

“We can still track them…” Dax said. “Scanning for tachyon traces. I have them, they’re leaving…now moving at warp four!”

“Follow them!” Sisko said. “And maintain speed, don’t lose them, helm, not even for one second!”

But if the _Enterprise_ changed course, they could lose track of it, the tachyon trace would only be active if they stayed right behind them, at the exact same speed as the enemy ship. And if the ship entered an area of space with high concentrations of tachyons then they _would_ lose sight of it...completely.

“I’m tracking their current course,” Dax said, her hands working fast on her console. “If they maintain this heading and speed then they’ll enter the Badlands in fifteen minutes.”

A dangerous place, the Badlands. And likely a tachyon high region of space.

“Stay with them,” Sisko repeated. “They might be able to hide in the Badlands, but they won’t be leaving without us knowing about it.”

It was now a waiting game. How long could the _Enterprise_ hide in the Badlands, and how long would it take Starfleet to get enough ships to surround the region and set up a net to catch them?

They had little choice but to wait and see.

\-----------

Dreamer accepted the hand held down into the hole, helping him up onto the deck, and found himself face to face with the concerned and untrusting eyes of Thistle.

“Fast work,” he said, but looked very very concerned. “Very fast work…”

It was a silent admonition. They had all heard, over the communications, that he had stopped working.

Dreamer nodded, and swallowed hard, looking over at ops, where Scarlett was now sitting, tapping at the console almost blindly. Jeeves was still at helm, looking pensive and quiet, and completely focused on maintaining their course. Angel was up behind the security station, now hastily tapping away, working on bringing the phaser and weapons back up to scratch. Clover was sitting at the secondary command chair, resting her eyes, her face a mask of pain and despair, stained with the blood of whoever had attacked her.

Ultraviolet stood near the viewscreen, piercing violet eyes watching them all from the front of the bridge, and nodding his head. The transfer of all ship controls to the bridge had been completed, but they had a disabled warp nacelle and were on the run from _Defiant_.

Had his delay been the reason for their current state? He did not calculate that this was a factor in the disabling of their nacelle, but he had been given little choice in the matter.

It had been only a brief flash in his mind, over the Borg collective link, a soft voice in his mind…

_Data...Data can you hear me?_

It had been enough to stop him in his tracks. He couldn’t respond. Couldn’t tell the man he admired, respected, and loved as a son could only love a surrogate father, that he had, in fact, betrayed them all. He couldn’t keep working either, and had shut off the connection.

Shutting down that connection between them had probably been terminal. He may very well have killed his former Captain, and he had done it automatically, shutting off the program as an android shuts off any function that was getting in the way of the desired outcome.

When he had realized this, his mind had been filled with horror at what he had done. Only Scarlett’s voice had gotten through the bubble of his horror, and he had tested every pathway to make sure he was functioning before getting back to the task he had been on.

Now, now all he could feel was his own despair and anguish filling him as he stumbled over to a wall and leaned against it. He may just have killed one of his oldest and dearest friends. As casually as one turns off a light switch.

_Captain...oh Captain...forgive me. Please forgive me..._

But Captain Picard was not there to calmly and rationally give him advice, or admonish his sins. There was another Captain now on board the _Enterprise_ , and he was a completely different kind of leader, and a stranger to them all.

“So here we are,” said Ultraviolet quietly. “The Brotherhood of Ashes…” the man turned to look back at them. “Only seven are here. One chose to remain on colony 53 to help us recruit future members…” he swallowed. “And the other two, betrayed us...but still...” he breathed. “We are here. We are in possession of the most powerful ship in the fleet. And we have the information we need to find the Firebird...with a bit of work...we’ll...”

“Do we?” Thistle interrupted loudly. “Really? I had certainly hoped there was a good reason we went through all this trouble!””

Frustration was the emotion he could recognize most clearly in the other man’s eyes. Many of them had joined with a promise that deaths would be minimized as much as possible whilst stealing the ship. The station’s destruction rendered the entire point moot.

“We do,” said Ultraviolet, and he looked over at Dreamer. “Dreamer is programmed to locate the Firebird.”

Dreamer leaned with his back against the wall. He had been expecting this, but was mentally not really in a good state of mind to be sharing. For a moment he didn’t say anything, knowing they were all waiting. It was better to get it over with now.

“Doctor Noonian Soong was one of the geneticists in charge of Project Firebird,” he said. “I have an important information chip that I am to _give_ to the Firebird,” he swallowed hard. “Unfortunately, I don’t know _who_ the Firebird is. The Firebird program is malfunctioning due to damage done to my neural net by the Borg. However, the information chip should still be able to identify the Firebird simply by the fact that nobody _else_ can remove it from my neural net...not without damaging me fatally. And nobody _else_ can access its contents even if it was removed. Doctor Soong was very strict with security.”

“If we could find a cybernetics expert who knows what to do to repair you, could you potentially get access to the information again…?” asked Clover, sitting up fully, hand on her stomach.

“Perhaps. Otherwise each of you has to try, one by one, to remove the chip in hopes that it can be removed,” Dreamer finished.

He was mentally imagining a conga line of Augments, all of them hopefully poking around in his neural net to test whether or not they had won the all important genetic lottery.

“We should find out more information before we take such a step,” Clover said softly.

Everything now depended on him, including her child’s future, and Dreamer found himself unable to look her in the eyes. Ultraviolet strode forward towards the Captain’s chair, and took a deep breath.

“I know someone who worked with Noonian Soong on his cybernetic research, a former Faction member,” the man admitted. “But it will take a bit of work to rescue him from where he is being held. For the time being, we need to make repairs to this ship and make a run for the Neutrality, before Starfleet has a chance to get a fleet force in to surround us.”

“We need to decide who is going to be in charge of this ship,” Thistle said fiercely. “Because I am not happy with the way things are, and you can understand _why_.”

Ultraviolet looked up.

“I suppose, until the day that Firebird is in command of his people, it is necessary to maintain the traditional starship command structures. Although I consider all of you my equal in intelligence, we all have different strengths and weaknesses. With everyone’s permission, I’ll stay in command.”

“That goes without saying,” said Angel, looking up suddenly and sharply in Thistle's direction, and then looking back at him. “I think we all already know what roles we best serve on a starship…but you tell us where you think we should be...Captain.”

When nobody objected to the title, Ultraviolet nodded. Clover was patiently waiting, and her husband had moved to stand behind her chair, putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Scarlett was looking severely put out, she had probably been feeling rather ill used just carrying the basket for him as he had worked. Jeeves seemed oblivious completely to what was happening, focused entirely on his station and maintaining their course.

“I want to reiterate,” said Ultraviolet, still looking down at his new chair as if he didn’t recognize it. “Every person on this ship is part of the Brotherhood and an equal. Angel…You will be in charge of weapons and security. Thistle and Clover will take over all engineering duties,” he turned and looked over at the helm. “Jeeves, helm control, and communications, navigation...Scarlett, operations and resource management. And Dreamer...you’ll be my first officer…” he let that sink in for a moment, and Dreamer felt Thistle’s sudden intake of breath. “But I think everyone is very well qualified to perform _any_ duty on this ship. In time we’ll all have a better understanding of where we’re all most comfortable.”

Ultraviolet finally turned and sat down in his chair and stretched a bit, as if emphasizing which place on the ship _he_ felt most comfortable. “First order of business, Jeeves, as soon as we reach the Badlands find us a biridion cloud, any biridion cloud...”

“Yes sir…”

Biridion could mask tachyon signals and enhanced and strengthened the effect of a cloak. It was available in high concentrations as clouds in the Badlands, but not very frequently. Not many people knew that they existed there. Working under Ultraviolet, side by side with highly advanced Augments, was going to be...interesting. He was no longer the smartest man on the ship and it gave him a strange and unfamiliar feeling of self-consciousness and worry.

Clover suddenly rose to her feet.

“I’ll go inspect the sick bay and get cleaned up,” she said, and immediately Thistle followed her, both of them probably intent to talk about what had happened somewhere with a communications block.

The silence that followed their exit was all he needed to know. It was going to take time. Strangers did not become a crew overnight, and there were a lot of very strong personalities on board that would not mesh together easily.

_And without that rapport...we are already lost._

He had sacrificed everything he cared about to fulfill the programming requirements built into him by his creator. And he was now looking over the edge into the abyss of potential failure. If he didn’t do something to repair this situation, this energy of distrust and dislike would destroy everything. He tapped his console to examine the status of the starboard nacelle, and decided.

“Captain, may I make a suggestion?”

“Please,” said Ultraviolet, sitting up and turning to look at him with keen violet eyes.

“We have all the supplies we need to upgrade the warp drive systems, and the nacelle repairs could take us weeks. It would be more advisable to upgrade the warp drive, increase the port nacelle’s maneuverability and speed, and make use of the new systems to escape, before Starfleet has a chance to make any move against us.”

“We’ll have to completely disable and deactivate the second nacelle, or it will trip us up at warp…” Scarlett said, though her posture showed she was keen to try.

Ultraviolet considered for a moment.

“Let's do it,” he got to his feet. “Angel, you have the bridge,” he said, and motioned for Dreamer and Scarlett to follow.

Hopefully the two Brahms agreed with this plan and would accept his place in the command chain.

And then their sacrifices would all be worthwhile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Its sometimes really hard to write space battles, its probably my biggest weakness in writing, but I think this turned out the way I planned it.
> 
> Also, I realize I didn't comment much upon what happened in the previous chapter. Because I didn't really know what to say, it didn't impact me as much as Garak's death did to write it, and this battle isn't done yet. I have a lot more to write that is going to be painful.
> 
> That, and I knew what was going to be happening in this chapter and that was what has been on my mind.


	6. A Leap Of Faith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did a few edits to the last chapter for consistency, and a lot of proof reading because I was tired when I posted that chapter and there were a lot of errors that needed fixing. Mostly typos involving the names of ships. I hope I caught them all. Sometimes I edit after posting, so come back to this chapter later to and I might have fixed some mistake I didn't catch during proof reading.

“Major, we have a problem…”

“I can see that,” Kira Nerys was looking out at Station 41 and feeling sickness rising up into her stomach.

It was a mess. The station had basically been broken up into multiple pieces, and she could tell, before he said anything, that the station was only being held together by the thin barriers of the shields. Oxygen levels were down to only 50% the standard minimums and people were probably losing consciousness.

“We can’t beam over,” said the second officer, “Not without getting inside the shields ourselves, and the station sections are moving erratically…Communications with the station is intermittent, there’s some kind of interference.”

“We need to get those medical supplies in,” Kira said leaning forward. “Move in as close as possible and match our shields to the station frequency, when they touch it should give us enough of a gap to beam a small team through. 

It was a risky maneuver, but hopefully they were small enough that they could manage it.

“The main section is still moving at the most even speed, we can try to match that,” said the helmsman.

Kira was still getting to know the officers on board the _Boryhas_ , though this kind of ship was one she had a nice little history with. Not quite as small as the two man fighters she and the resistance had once used, Bajoran interceptors could carry a crew of fifteen, but their ship crew currently consisted of the five members of her bridge team and the five medical officers in the back with the cargo. Dax had compared the Bajoran ships to Starfleet runabouts, stretched out flat from nose to tail and given wings. It was certainly not enough room to evacuate over a thousand people, but enough to bring them the all important gift of oxygen masks.

_But O’Brien said our weapons were capable so all we really needed was a warp boost..._

It was very tricky maneuvering, and she could actually see people standing inside the raw gaping station hull as they slowly, painfully, slipped up to the edge of the damaged section, the station’s shields turning vibrant upon touching their own. Their nose was just inside the shields.

“Kira to Bashir, you and the cargo are going now,” she turned. “Beam the doctor and his team directly to the most populated section, and pull us back outside the shields to minimize the risk of feedback on the shields.”

“We’ll have to re-establish open communications with the station, if we want to bring everyone back.”

“Doctor Bashir’s team has been transported over.”

_Now we wait for the rest of Starfleet’s ships to show up. The Defiant went to intercept the Enterprise, and the Cairo should be on its way. But where is the rest of the fleet…?_

She didn’t need to even ask the question. A space station already destroyed took second priority to a powerful warship already in the hands of an enemy force. _Cairo_ was probably the only ship they would be getting any help from today.

_And let's be honest, there’s ten of us and this station has over a thousand people on board...we need any help we can get!_

\-----------

Doctor Julian Bashir was in full medical mode as he beamed on board the quivering station, and the first order of business was to just start handing out masks and emergency blankets. But they didn’t have enough. Five hundred masks and maybe fifty blankets for over a thousand people? Added to that was the fact that the temperature on the station was dropping towards zero, and his breath was coming out of him in a fog. The station personnel were shivering from the cold temperatures and struggling for breath as they tried to keep warm. Hypothermia and frostbite were his foremost concerns. A few less oxygen needy station personnel, still mostly conscious, converged on him to join the team.

“We don’t have enough supplies for everyone,” Julian said to them. “Children and those with respiratory distress and the wounded take first priority, and sedate the injured, it’ll slow their breathing and decrease their oxygen usage,” he instructed his nurses. “We can’t beam the wounded away just yet, _Boryhas_ doesn’t have the room, so set up a triage in this open area, and try to get a replicator working so we can replicate more emergency blankets.”

“ _Cairo_ will be here in forty minutes,” said Ensign Bendan, an Andorian, who looked lively and happy compared to the rest of them. “Counselor Troi is in Command, but she’s not in a good way…”

Betazoids were a highly oxygen needy race, living on a planet with over 40% oxygen in the atmosphere. They also lived on a very temperate planet with very few winter days. Troi would be feeling the cold, and lack of oxygen, quite keenly.

“Keep at those repairs, we need more oxygen units, and the masks in the crate we brought only have an hour’s supply per unit…”

“Yes sir…”

Yes sir. They had accepted him as a superior immediately. It felt rather good if he was honest with himself. It wouldn’t be long until they realized that he didn’t have the authority to give anyone on this station any commands.

He moved now with a supply of masks to hand out hooked onto his belt, and the ensign led him to where Counsellor Troi was sitting with her hand on a woman’s injured head. He took a moment to put a mask over Troi’s tear stained face before opening his tricorder to scan Doctor Crusher, mentally keeping his focus despite seeing his mentor and friend in such a state. A station nurse was already at their side, but she looked like she was also struggling to stay conscious. He gave the nurse a mask pointedly, any personnel he could add to his team, the better.

“Major concussion and fracture of the parietal bone…”

He accepted the medical instrument the nurse handed him from her kit, a bone knitter, and gently pushed Troi’s hand away.

“Counselor Troi...?” said the nurse softly.

“Oxygen deprivation has set in…” said Bashir immediately, consulting his tricorder. “And she is showing the early stages of hypothermia...”

“I’m sorry, I’m having trouble staying focused,” Troi said, as if this whole mess was her own fault.

“Just concentrate on your breathing, gentle, slow and deep, in and out,” an oxygen mask was being put on Doctor Crusher’s head now, and he stood up. “Try to stabilize their body temperature and keep them comfortable,” he instructed the nurse, and then he moved on, one of his nurses still right behind him. A thousand people needed his attention and he was only one doctor, dammit!

_I need to grow more hands!_

Admiral Brooks was dead. He learned this when he found the man’s widow, beautiful and sad, sitting next to his body, having wrapped her faux fur wrap around him as if to help him stay warm. But his blood was all over the deck plating and he was never going to be warm again.

“Ma’am,” he said softly, scanning her for injuries. His nurse wrapped an emergency blanket around her shoulders. 

She didn’t move, just sat there, staring off into nothing.

“Should we give her a mask?”

Bashir swallowed hard. Their resources were very tight…

“No,” said the woman quietly. “No, I’m well enough, give them to those who still need them…”

Bashir put a hand on her shoulder, then moved on. There were a _lot_ of people to help.

Lieutenant Commander Chalmers was a lanky man, no more than twenty, who he found calmly, unconcernedly working away at fixing the station replicators, despite his hands and face being burnt black. His visor was fused partially now to his skin, yet he was still working hard, the others around him giving him anxious, ghostly looks.

By all rights, the man shouldn’t have been conscious from the pain alone.

“Commander Chalmers…I’m Doctor Bashir...of the Bajoran Militia.”

“Bashir?” there was a moment of recognition, and a deep inhalation of breath.

Julian nodded and gave the man a cursory scan with his tricorder, noting how quickly his body was healing, the way his body compensated for the low temperatures and lack of oxygen...he looked the younger man straight in his eyes. He wasn’t blind, the VISOR was a non-functional model.

A fake.

Chalmers’ face was a study of pain and understanding as Julian and the nurse carefully removed the charred unit from his face. He set his nurse to working a dermal regenerator over his skin, and opened his pack to decide what level of painkiller to give him. Julian considered for a moment. He felt the silence between them as an accusation.

It was part hormones and part instinct, but Julian smiled reassuringly, and started to treat the man’s injured face again, leaving his limited supply of painkillers behind. This man was adjusting really well to the pain and healing fast, painkillers now would just be a waste.

_Genetically engineered perhaps? Or some other racial heritage? Medical confidentiality is a legal right, so he has nothing to worry about from me..._

He felt quite positive about that as he finished treating the man’s burns, then moved on to his next patient, leaving his nurse behind to finish his work. He had no nurses left, so he continued on alone.

He was thus busily working on keeping bodies warm and lungs fed with oxygen when the _Cairo_ finally arrived. He was still unaware of her arrival until a firm hand landed suddenly on his shoulder and he found himself looking up into the stern and concerned face of Captain Edward Jellico.

“Sit down and rest for a moment son,” he said, “My teams are beaming on board, and I have special...orders...I was given about you.”

Julian swallowed, hard, and looked around him. Starfleet officers were everywhere now and people were handing out more oxygen units. More nurses had arrived from the _Cairo_. He recognized Doctor Nicolas Gordon nearby, working on another patient, and sending him a very fierce look. He was now pointedly aware of how Bajoran his uniform was.

“Admiral Ross said, and I quote,” Jellico put his hands on his hips. “‘You didn’t see Doctor Bashir. You didn’t hear him. You didn’t speak to him. You won’t have seen, or heard, or have spoken to him until I _say_ you have.’”

“What…?” he couldn’t make any other more coherent response.

“He’s covering for you,” said Jellico firmly. “And I would like to know why one of the best Starfleet Doctors I’ve ever met is now wearing a Bajoran uniform...but it can wait. Right now we have to get this station put back together.”

Julian blinked, and looked down at the oxygen mask a _Cairo_ nurse was trying to pry out of his hands so he could keep working. He handed him the last one on his belt as well and stood up to his feet.

“I promise you Captain, when this is over I’ll take you to Quark’s and buy you a round and tell you the whole damn thing.”

“I’m going to hold you to that,” the older man pointed his finger at him, then slapped him on the shoulder and gripped it. “Come on, we need to regroup. There’s a situation that we need to handle fast and I’d like your help.”

\-------------

Captain Edward Jellico felt his stomach flipping as he watched the farthest section of the station slowly rotating away from them. Their team had first beamed over to the Bajoran ship, _Boryhas_ , which was the only ship small enough to get within transporter distance without potentially colliding with the station. Wash rinse and repeat. Since only ten people could comfortably fit on the ship, the Bajorans had been going back and forth ever since, grabbing a handful of his officers, maneuvering through the debris, beaming them to the station, and bringing back the wounded with them to the _Cairo_.

It was tedious, and cumbersome and was not practical, and a lot of people needed urgent medical attention in a proper surgical suite. But the shields were the only thing keeping the station from drifting apart and losing stability. Like this section he was watching now, with twelve people still alive on board, and they couldn’t reach them. They needed a better solution.

But upon arrival he had immediately been set upon by a frantic Andorian ensign...His name was Bendan and he couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old.

_Boy we recruit them young these days..._

The ensign had brought him to Counsellor Troi, who had briefed him on the situation and eloquently described the courage of the small Bajoran relief team that had brought all the oxygen masks they could fit on their little ship, which was little more than a five man medical team. However small the amount, the masks, and the team itself, had been a small godsend.

Nobody had asked Bajor for help, the distress signal had been sent on a Starfleet channel. But they had sent whatever small amount of help they could send anyway. All other ships in the area were on their way now to pursue the _Enterprise_.

Bajorans. Jellico had always been in utter awe and respect of their sheer honesty and charity towards others, and today was no exception. Only ten people, and yet...

“Doctor Bashir is now in command of the medical team,” Troi said to him, and Jellico took a deep breath at that name. “He seems unaffected by the oxygen loss.”

“There’s gonna be trouble if people start realizing who he is…”

Despite Admiral Ross being the new head of Starfleet Security, there was a moment to pause and consider. Admiral Novos was a blowhard, maybe, but he was also the head of Starfleet Intelligence, with access to information that none of them had. And Novos was now fully convinced that the virus that was now spreading across planet Earth was a Faction plot, not something the Dominion had come up with.

Jellico thought that he was probably right, but Novos was accusing Bashir of being part of the Faction and Jellico now had another problem.

Which Admiral to obey? When two Admirals of equal rank and power in the Federation disagreed the tie breaker was usually the President. But the President was in bed, gravely ill, and the Vice-President was leaving the Faction business up to the Admirals.

_Right...so until all the top admirals meet to decide for themselves I have to decide whether to take him into custody like Novos wants, or just leave him alone for now like Ross wants…_

It was the shattered state of the space station, and the sight of Doctor Bashir pumping with his hands to physically resuscitate his patient, that decided it for him.

_This man is a fucking Doctor. Political bullshit be damned, we need him!_

But he was going to keep both his eyes on this man just the same. He was not going to play games either way. So now they were here, Bashir at his side, all of them contemplating the distant rotating station piece.

There was nothing but shields keeping it from drifting off into space. Closed doors and emergency force fields were the only things keeping the people inside from suffocating to death, powered by a wing and a prayer and an emergency battery that was slowly losing power. It was too far out into space to reach by foot, it was rotating too much to get a stable lock with a tractor beam, and the empty freezing vacuum of space was spanning the distance between them. It was less than 100 meters away.

Twelve people were huddled up inside the section, waiting for rescue. It was no bigger than the bridge on board his own ship but it was almost a million miles away in his mind.

“Powwow,” he turned his team around and gathered them together in a standing huddle, mostly for warmth, the station was damned freezing. “Atmospheric suits?”

“It would take too long to get everyone suited up, even if we start beaming suits over now. They have ten minutes of energy at best.”

“We can send over a line to pull the section in,” said ensign Bendan. “We already have a line right here…I think it’ll be long enough.”

The line he pointed to was actually an old fashioned emergency hose in its case on the wall, meant for putting out fires. About 300 feet long, just about right.

_They still make these things?_

“That thing will never hold, the section is too heavy…” said lieutenant Frines, and Jellico wanted immediately to smack the man for his moment of thickness.

“It's a _vacuum_ , weightless,” he said. “But we still need to send someone over to connect it.”

“I’ll go,” said Bashir immediately, and Jellico gave the man a long look.

“Son, we don’t have time to get you into a suit…”

“I can survive for approximately three minutes in a vacuum,” said Bashir, looking miserable that he knew that fact. “If I plug up my nose and ears and keep my eyes closed, I should be all right.”

“If you don’t freeze instantly...or boil up!” said ensign Bendan unhelpfully.

“We’re running out of time,” said Bashir, he was already pinning a plethora of oxygen masks to his belt. “Make space, I’m going to take a running start.”

“Clear a runway for him boys,” Jellico ordered. “Bendan, get him a transmitter so he can tell us when he’s ready for us to pull them in.”

“This is suicide!” said Frines, and mentally Jellico was inclined to believe him.

“I’ve learned many things about doctors in my time son,” he helped move debris out of the way as two other men worked to get the hose properly set up to repel. “And one of those things is to never get between doctors and their patients.”

They secured the hose to Bashir’s already laden belt, and he could almost see the calculations going on in the man’s head as he prepared for the leap of faith he was about to take, plugging his ears with some gel from his medical kid. Bendan handed him the transmitters, then everyone moved over to the sides. Bashir took for himself a racer’s stance, torso bent, hands on the floor panels, right knee forward, left stretched behind, head up and focused on the runway they had made for him.

It just didn’t seem long enough. Jellico stood up straight.

“Ten hut!” He gave the order and his startled officers stood to attention and saluted as Bashir barrelled forward at sudden breakneck speed. The forcefield dropped, briefly, to let him through, there was a brief second of wind pulling on their bodies, and Bashir launched, without fear, through the resulting gap into the emptiness of space.

\---------

_Nine…eight...seven..._

His lungs immediately shut down when the freezing shock hit him, his eyes, despite being shut tight, were stinging, his tears boiling and crystalizing instantly. The sterilizing gel in his ears instantly formed into solid plugs. The distance between him and the rotating section seemed a lifetime away and he didn’t care to open his eyes to know how far away it was, or if he was even going to hit it. He had calculated all the angles in his mind before launch, aimed for a likely fruitful opening in its hull, and had to pray he was moving in the right direction.

_Four...three…two…_

Julian suddenly felt the impact of a forcefield, but fortunately this one only had enough energy to keep oxygen inside, not fast moving bodies, and he went into a rolling crunch as he passed through it. The deck plating collided with his back as he was propelled forward by his momentum into the now pressurized environment. He collided with a solid object and dared open his eyes. His eyelashes crackled. His skin was covered in a layer of salt crystals...his sweat had boiled and crystalized. His ears were burning, the gel had cracked but held, but his eardrums were probably severely damaged. His skin itched.

_Decompression sickness...well I knew something bad would happen..._

But the object he had collided with was the center support beam of the section, about a meter in diameter.

_This will do._

There was no gravity in here, so he found himself floating carefully around the pillar until he had wrapped the hose twice, and then removed the end of it from his belt.

He was fumbling almost blindly trying to tie it, vision blurring, when two soft female hands, highly familiar, took everything out of his hands to hand over to someone else.

“Doctor…”

Nurse Ogawa’s voice sounded as if she was under the ocean, under water. He looked up at her, and he noted she was wearing an improvised mask of an O2 tank with a medical tube pasted into her nose. The people all around him were in blue uniforms, or in patient scrubs, wrapped up in blankets to keep warm. This section had been a part of the station’s medical bay.

“Alyssa,” he said her first name, and she pulled out her tricorder to examine him as he handed another nurse his sheath of masks to pass around. He’d only been able to bring six, but thanks to the O2 tank they wouldn’t have to worry too much.

“Just rest for a moment Doctor...I’m amazed you survived out there...”

“I have to signal them to start pulling us in…” he activated the transmitter, and then had a good moment when he could finally look around at the room.

As it turned out, he had won the lottery. This was the section’s only fully enclosed interior, and he had rolled right through the only door with a permeable forcefield into the only location not exposed to space.

Like threading a needle.

_‘The Prophets are with you now Kaj...listen to them closely…’_

Julian closed his eyes as the voice told him, and swallowed. They had stopped rolling and were now being slowly pulled back to rejoin the station. Ogawa pulled him to the side to anchor them both to a biobed, and he stilled his breathing, feeling his lungs laboring in his chest. 

Julian Bashir listened, and he could have sworn, in that brief moment, that he could hear the crying song of an eagle, soaring out across the starry sky.

\--------

“Don’t pull too hard boys or it’ll move too fast and crash into us!” said Jellico, as they all pulled on the fire hose, inch by painstaking inch. “Let her own momentum bring her to us…”

He let them have at it, and leaned against the deck, thanking the ensign who had brought him a canteen of water. He had held his breath watching Bashir launch into space, and now he was breathing deeply, despite having done barely any work at all.

 _I am getting old,_ he thought, feeling for a moment as if his lungs had been closed up along with Doctor Bashir’s. _This damned cold...we should have put on thermal suits for this mission._

If he were really honest, he had been high in his expectation that they would be able to repair the station, but a little too confident about it. The station life support systems were dead, and they were not going to be fixing them today.

“ _Boryhas_ to Captain Jellico, the communications interference has been isolated and repaired, we now have communications.”

“Fantastic,” said Jellico and he tapped his badge. “Jellico to _Cairo_ , I’ve been told we have ears again. Find me a way to transport thousands of people without having to lower the shields…”

“Understood sir…”

The loose station section was now secured and connected to the station. His team was now inching an emergency gangplank across the gap, since they couldn’t risk the walls of both sections colliding.

“ _Cairo_ to Jellico, we’ve found a way to get around our problem, sir. We can boost our power output and send an energy beam into the station's shields, allowing the station to expand the shields further to connect with our own.”

“Great idea! Get it done,” he replied, watching in great awe as the section survivors slowly made their way across the gangplank.

Jellico waited until Doctor Bashir himself was stumbling his disoriented way across with a nurse holding him steady, her entire expression one of concern. He approached them both and took the man’s other arm. Julian Bashir’s face was pale and ghostly, his skin was mottled and he was squinting his eyes in a way that suggested he couldn’t see anymore.

 _Decompression sickness,_ decades of experience told him this, and Jellico shook his head in pure disbelief.

“Doctor,” he said, holding Bashir against him in a side hug. “You have balls of bloody tritanium.”

Everyone laughed, and Bashir gave an embarrassed smile.

“Thank you sir…”

“All right boys, get these people back to our ship, we’re headed for Bajor,” he paused for a moment, then tapped his badge. “Jellico to _Cairo_ , send a message to the _Destiny_ and the rest of the fleet that we’ll be headed to Deep Space Nine…I don’t want the ships to get back here and wonder where the heck all the people went.”

He didn’t wait for the reply, there was too much left still to do, and so little time to do it.

But they would get it done. Seeing Doctor Bashir flying through space without any concern for himself had emboldened him and his crew.

_Maybe this will finally convince Starfleet and the Admirals to finally leave the damn Doctor alone!_

But he wasn’t entirely confident they would share his assessment.

\----------

Ranjen Frim Petar sat back on his heels patiently looking out over the promenade, Ranjen Jak Roben was by his side, and they were standing with the large piles of blankets that they were waiting to hand out to the arriving survivors. The monks kept these large supplies of warm blankets inside the temple in case of an emergency, and this certainly was one. The station personnel were now taking their lead, replicating the emergency blankets that Starfleet issued standard, but those blankets didn’t look nearly as warm as the Inkarian wool quilts that they were currently standing beside.

“Doctor Bashir says the promenade and your bar are the only places near the infirmary large enough for a triage,” Constable Odo was now arguing with the bartender Quark. “Unless you want to leave potential customers sitting out in the cold?”

“No no no, I was just wondering if maybe the bright lights in my bar, and the smell of alcohol, might not be the best environment for those who are sick.”

“You’re probably right about that,” Odo huffed. “Nonetheless, I have orders to find as much space on the promenade as possible with carefully controlled heat sources…and this is such a place.”

“We have room in the temple,” Jak said helpfully, and the shapeshifter huffed.

“Don’t give him any excuse to weasel out of it…”

“Constable, if the Bajoran temple is willing to lend a hand I would hardly be one to stand in their way…and you seem overworked, why not sit for a moment and I’ll see what I can do about clearing some room, maybe behind the dabo tables…?”

The aggravated shapeshifter did seem rather harried, but he had good reason to be. Of the over one thousand residents of station 41 that had survived, nearly all of them would be coming on board so that the _Cairo_ could join the rest of the fleet. Softly Frim wondered if maybe Odo was put out because he had been left behind when the _Boryhas_ had left. 

_The Kaj didn’t tell us he would be leaving either...We are supposed to be at his side as he travels..._

Frim caught sight of a youthful man in purple and teal moving quickly through the crowds towards them, and took a deep breath, bracing for impact. This was a difficult person to deal with at best of times, and right now Songbird’s eyes were frantic.

“I’ll help you,” he said immediately, and picked up a blanket. “God knows I can’t play anymore, I don’t think anybody is listening now.”

The bar was emptying of people as Odo directed ensigns laden with cots to set them up inside, and the Ferengi had his hands on his head in concern and dismay.

 _“Attention station personnel,"_ said a voice over the intercom. _“Starship Cairo has now docked. The first level of the promenade is now closed to business. Please proceed calmly to level two and three.”_

Frim spared a look down the promenade and was looking towards the station’s rolling gear airlock just as it opened and Bashir himself came marching inside, looking fierce and furious, and he might have stayed that way if he hadn’t seen the monks and young Songbird with their stacks of blankets near the temple.

The Kaj moved quickly and angrily towards them, and then as he reached them, his face softened in grief and he pulled the startled Songbird into his arms and started to cry. 

Frim kept a respectful silence waiting for them to slowly pull apart.

“Oh god, I feel like I’m a hundred years old,” Bashir croaked. “I have a few minutes and then they’re going to start beaming people over…” he looked over at Frim, and the blanket in his hands, and his eyes became momentarily distant. “Those are the blankets Garak donated aren’t they…?” he said softly.

“I believe so,” said Frim, feeling a momentary sadness. “We weren’t certain the blankets the station personnel have been replicating would be warm enough.”

Songbird smiled widely, making Frim think that perhaps they had been mistaken.

“I think Garak would be happy to see them being used for such a good cause,” Bashir took one of the blankets in his hands and tested its weight, before handing it back to Frim. “I certainly am.”

“Major Kira to Doctor Bashir, we’re ready to start transporting.”

“Understood, I’m already on the promenade.”

Frim didn’t have much more time to assess the shifting changes to the Kaj’s mood, the cots had begun to fill with people being transported and Kaj Bashir was one of the first to reach them. Pulling out his tricorder and beginning to move in amongst them, it seemed to Frim, as they passed out blankets, that he was deciding who needed his attention the most. Frim knew that most of them would recover, it was just hypothermia they were fighting right now, and that took time, and a nice warm blanket.

Frim came to a stop, for Jak had paused and was standing there, almost as if he were startled. The Kaj had taken a blanket from the Ranjen’s hands himself and had wrapped it around a woman with red hair and a visible head injury.

“‘And the broken will heed his call,’” said Jak next to him, softly, eyes closed in reverence. “‘The sorrow laden, the damaged and defeated, by their thousands they will come to Bajor, shivering and cold, and he shall wrap them in warm blankets, as a bird wraps her young within her wings…’”

_Oh Prophets it's true...the Prophecy, it's true, and it's all happening right in this moment._

Frim had always considered himself devout, and had dedicated his life to serving the Order of the Kaj, but now, seeing it actually in person coming true...it was humbling how little faith he really had possessed. Now, however, he parted his hands, and together they both began to pray.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! Jak and Frim have first names now!
> 
> I am not a Star Trek technology expert so I don't know if half the stuff I said in this chapter was canon. Sometimes I have a story idea in my mind and I rework the canon a bit to fit the idea. Take Starbase 41...different fan maps put it in different places, but its not always shown as being anywhere near Bajor. I put it near Bajor and I'm not sorry, the plot comes first.


	7. The Best Medicine

Guinan opened her eyes and found herself looking into the relieved face of a young ensign, a Trill, her face telling Guinan almost a million things in just one joyful expression.

“It's all right, you’re on board the _Destiny_ …” she said immediately. “I’m Counsellor Ezri Tigan. You must have really strong lungs, you should have ran out of oxygen half an hour before we got to you.”

“My people developed a little technique for staying alive in a low oxygen environment,” Guinan said. “El Aurians have survived for as long as we have by learning to adapt to different situations.”

“Well Captain Riker will be very happy,” she said. “I’ll give you a chance to rest, Doctor Phim says you’ll make a full recovery.”

Guinan looked over at the Denobulan medical officer, who nodded her head with a soft movement and rushed back to her other duties without a word. The room was filled with recovering patients on biobeds and Guinan sat up for a moment to look around.

A lot of people in uniforms were recovering here. Mostly burns, possibly plasma burns, a few head injuries. Battle injuries, she was guessing, standard for a space battle.

“Is it all right for me to get up?” she asked the nearest nurse, who barely lifted her head in agreement before Guinan had gotten off the biobed to her feet, another nurse helping her down.

She felt stiff from the nearly two hours she had spent in that torpedo. Her joints were a little sore, so she decided a walk around the sick bay would probably help, and the Doctor seemed very busy with the patients. It was as she was moving around the room that she spotted a very familiar form sitting in a chair in a private area near a biobed, just off the main recovery room. Doctor Phim had entered this room, and was studying the patient on the bed very closely.

Guinan peeked into the room, and found Captain Riker there, looking strained, and his eyes were tense. 

“Captain,” Phim looked up, looking very concerned. “They just aren’t responding, they have completely shut off. We need a neuro-cyberneticist. Someone skilled in cybernetic implants of the brain and understanding how they function. It's a very specialized field, not many people go into it. And unfortunately I’m not one of them.”

“How much time does he have?”

“It's hard to say without understanding how these implants work. Medically we can keep him in cryostasis forever. But he won’t live much longer without surgery.”

Guinan swallowed, and dared to move over next to Riker, who lifted his head to look at her. His face was haggard and his eyes were red.

“Guinan...thank god…at least you’re all right...”

She nodded, and looked down at the still, unresponsive face of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, before turning back to look at Riker. Defeat was bitterly bent into the shoulders of the _Destiny’_ s new Captain and his face was a thing of torment.

“Your new crew probably needs you on the bridge,” said Guinan, as Phim moved away from the biobed. “I’ll sit with the Captain for awhile.”

Riker nodded, rubbed his face in a familiar gesture to her that spoke volumes as to his stress level, and stood to his feet.

“First I need to find someone who can help him, or I will never be able to sleep at night,” he put a hand on her shoulder. “If you need anything…?”

“No, you go ahead, I just need a bit of rest and a chance to talk to the Captain alone. I have some things I want to tell him that I haven’t gotten around to yet.”

Riker smiled, in the knowing way of someone familiar with who she was and the way she dealt with bad situations, and turned to leave.

Guinan kept her expression neutral as she watched him go, then turned to look down at the Captain and sighed.

Inside, she was weeping miserably for her beloved friend, and there was very little she could do but hold his hand, and hope that Captain Riker was successful in his search.

\--------

The engines were pulsing very slowly, quietly, singing a song to him that was rhythmic, almost angelic. His mind focused on those rhythms, calculating thousands of potential outcomes from the premature ejection of the warp core, and very few of them were pleasant. He paused in his contemplation to look up at the two men standing in front of him.

“We can do it, but I wouldn’t suggest ejecting the old core,” Thistle sat up, letting his hair fall into his face as he contemplated Ultraviolet, who was leaning on the island console, looking down at him, an eyebrow raised. “If the wild energy and volatile gravity fields of the Badlands hit the warp core they could destabilize it and cause a breach which would give our position away at best, demolish half this region of space at worst.”

“We still have yet to find a biridion cloud, and we’re running out of time, it might be more prudent to start work on the engines immediately and store the old core temporarily.”

Thistle was purposely ignoring the android who had actually given him the proposal. It was going to be a battle of wills, this situation. Androids were not biological life forms, they were machines, no matter how advanced their AI. He would never consider his beautiful, angelic _Enterprise_ or her engines a sentient being and she was his own creation. He didn’t care what physical shape it took, a computer was a computer.

But then, he had never been in charge of programming the AI's of starships; he was a warp theoretician, creating a warp engine design that the blasted Rebirth Faction had stolen from his laboratory. It was now up to him to correct that oversight. And here was this android, just calmly suggesting they do the upgrades as if they were a matter of fact addition and not a work of complete and utter genius he had been laboring over for almost ten years.

This creation of human hands and genius could not possibly _understand_ human genius itself, or the sacrifices of it.

“We will find a cloud,” Ultraviolet murmured. “The _Defiant_ won’t be able to track us once we reach the Badlands…we’ll have plenty of time to search.”

“It would be a difficult maneuver, but we could ignite the old core on purpose as a distraction when we escape,” Thistle said, and looked finally at the android. “But if we’re planning to keep the old core around for awhile we need to have very strong containment measures in place for storing it. A warp core is, by its nature, always unstable.”

“But it can be done,” Ultraviolet looked up at Dreamer pointedly, a smile suggested that he was happy Thistle had given the android even the slightest glance.

“We would need to relocate the core to an auxiliary core bay, as it won’t be compatible with the new engine sheath,” the android nodded. “But we have the equipment necessary to alter the core bay to keep the old core completely stable until we’re ready to eject it.”

“I’ll work on the new engines, you work on the bay?” Thistle proposed, feeling that he would be more comfortable having an artificial, precise computer dealing with the potentially unstable core than the redoubtable Scarlett, who looked like she was ready to bite nails from where she was standing behind them all, completely separate from this conversation. He knew her biggest weakness; she was a constant distraction to others. Men specifically.

“Agreed,” said Dreamer, and he gave a nod, turning. “Captain…”

“I’ll let you two decide who else to put on what. I’m going back to the bridge to see what we can do about our tachyon levels. If we can’t find that biridion cloud, there are many other hiding places in the Badlands we could make use of.”

Biridion was ideal, but Thistle already recognized in his new Captain a fatal flaw by this comment; an almost zealous certainty in every action he took. A careful covetousness to his own that blinded him to the presence of others, and thus the potential for a negative outcome from what he had planned.

Being an Augment, one could not help but be controlled by statistical probability, the ability to calculate down to the decimal point the probable outcome of every scenario and problem, the measurement of all evidence to come to a precise conclusion. A very good skill to have for a military strategist.

But it was fatal to ignore chaos. Chaos theory was often ignored by Augments, but was a vital sister to probability mechanics, the vital idea and understanding that at all times there are small inconsistencies and flaws in the universe that cannot be measured, cannot be accounted for, small unpredictable events that could ultimately alter the course of any precisely measured statistics based battle plan.

Warp designers worked daily in the embrace of chaos theory. One could never truly know how the crew of a new ship would make use of an engine design, or improve a design, or how quickly they would find an overlooked flaw. It was the chaos of the individual, with individual thought, that meant even the most well constructed warp drive had to be tested in the field, and might be used in rather ingenious ways the creator hadn’t intended. Or cause damage in ways nobody could predict.

Thistle looked up at Dreamer, who had already gone to a console to start replicating the supplies he would need for the core bay revisions and Thistle sighed, getting to his feet.

_Predictable. He’ll tap Scarlett for help next if I don’t act now._

“Scarlett, you’re in charge of upgrading the bridge consoles for the new warp engines, I’ll start transporting the materials to the bridge from here…”

He walked past the startled android, ignored the acrid look of the woman, and then stopped, and turned to look at Dreamer for a moment considering.

“A word of advice,” he said to him, “Don’t get used to it. Being our Commander. Augments as a group are flawed and stubborn in our prejudices. Once we have what we need from you, it’ll all be over.”

Dreamer’s eyes didn’t change, and he didn’t respond, but his head tilted sideways, as if considering whether or not he should say anything. Scarlett glared, clearly showing her preference, but he didn’t think Dreamer would keep her around for very long. Scarlett’s last attempt to wrap a man around her fingers had resulted in his death after all.

A man whose body was still laying on the ground, and would probably start to decay soon.

“Thistle to Jeeves, could you start beaming the dead crew members to a cargo bay or something? I can’t work with an audience.”

It wasn’t just him, but at that comment, the android at the replicator console actually chuckled.

_At least he has a sense of humor._

\--------

“We’ve lost them sir.”

Cadet Nog’s frustrated voice entered his ears and Sisko sat up, looking out into the expanse of the Badlands like any general surveys the battlefield. Any slight movement out of the corner of their viewscreen ‘eyes’ could be an enemy in motion.

“Oh they’re out there,” said Dax, looking fiercely determined, and Sisko knew she had her mind set. “They’ll look for a biridion cloud to hide in, or a much higher concentration of tachyons so they can keep up their cloak and keep evading. I’ll start scanning for likely targets…”

Sisko nodded and took a deep breath.

“We’ll need more ships,” said Sisko. “Contact Deep Space Nine, see who else might be on their way…Keep scanning, but put us on a patrol course around the perimeter…other ships will be joining us soon enough. I want to get a net spread out around the Badlands as fast as possible.”

“It may not be possible to cover every potential escape route,” said Worf. “However, if they come out too close to the Cardassian border they risk running into the Dominion…we should consider funneling them in that direction.”

Sisko walked over to him, and looked down at the map of the region Worf had brought up to plan out their patrol route. The Badlands themselves looked massively wide in comparison to their small ship.

“Unless it was the Dominion that stole the _Enterprise_?” Chief O’Brien said, sounding severely concerned now. “We still don’t know who they are…” 

“No,” Sisko walked back over to his chair, but stayed on his feet. “No…this must be the work of one of the Factions.”

“I’ll check in with _Destiny_ , and see what they can tell us,” said Dax, tapping on her console. “If they are one of the Factions, then there may still be more of them that didn’t manage to board the _Enterprise_ before the station was destroyed.”

“Interesting…” Sisko sat down and considered. “I wonder just how deeply they’ve infiltrated Starfleet…”

Silence was the response from the bridge to his comment. Soon they would be hearing from the fleet. Soon other ships would be coming to join them. But for now, he was the only line of defense keeping _Enterprise_ from ducking out of the Badlands and picking a target to go after next.

Potentially even Deep Space Nine.

\---------

Julian Bashir didn’t return to his quarters to nap. He found an empty cot on the promenade near the Bajoran temple, and stretched out and sighed. There were no major emergencies left for him to worry about now and he was spent.

Chalmers had some of the worst injuries and the Bajoran nurses had transferred him to a burn unit in the infirmary where he was very quickly recovering. The battered man had been trying to stop the explosions before they went off, and had been inside a damaged conduit when it ignited, sealing off one of the decks and saving over a hundred lives in the process. And he had kept working, inspiring everyone around him. He was being hailed as a hero by all.

There were many unspoken heroes here as well. Counsellor Troi was sitting at the end of Doctor Crusher’s cot, and the two women were quietly talking. Troi was still counselling the crew, going slowly from cot to cot to check up on people, despite everything she herself had been through. But she would need to talk to a fellow counsellor herself before long. If she didn’t, he was certain Doctor Crusher would order her to. An empath carried the emotional weight of all the people who surrounded her, and she was probably needing a bit of a break. But he wasn’t going to order her to talk to a counsellor.

He was a Bajoran doctor, Ross had fiercely told him that over the viewscreen in Jellico’s ready room on board the _Cairo_.

_I had every right to be angry and storm out, that man promised I would keep my medical license if I asked for asylum on Bajor. And had told me the charges would be dropped, and they were. Yet here I am, an outcast all over again. If Bajor joins the Federation I could be barred from even entering a medical facility._

But if he had it all to do over again, he still would have boarded the _Boryhas_. He was still a doctor, and his patients came first.

As this was the end of his duty shift for this particular crisis, he had taken himself off duty to rest for a few hours. He was dead tired, recovering from his space jump quickly, but emotionally just done with it all. Doctor Girani was now moving amongst the hypothermia patients, transferring those whose bodies were back to normal temperatures into Quark’s, and directing others to cots closer to the infirmary. Ensigns were moving along the promenade removing empty cots and putting them onto a pallet. There were still hundreds of people recovering here, and it would take a long time for them all to be relocated to new quarters.

_Triage itself doesn’t last long, but it certainly lasts in the minds of the people involved. At least we have the room needed for everyone to recover._

It helped that they had already performed an initial triage on Starbase 41, and _Cairo_ ’s medical team had been very good about transferring only the worst cases to their ship’s infirmary for treatment. The rest had been put elsewhere on the ship, so their arrival and transfer to DS9 had been quick and orderly, and without the chaos that normally happens in triage.

It was still exhausting. It was still tiring. And he was half dozing when he heard a strangely familiar voice calling to him across the promenade.

“Doctor Bashir!”

Julian lifted his head and saw in confusion his startled patients and ensigns moving out of the way of Captain William T. Riker, who was advancing towards him with a very determined look in his eyes.

He hadn’t realized the _Destiny_ had arrived at the station. That was how tired he was. Riker was being followed by Doctor Phim. He recognized the _Destiny_ 's doctor from when the ship had visited the station to ferry Admiral Ross for visits. She was looking very grim.

“Doctor,” Riker bent down to sit beside him. “Captain Picard needs your help.”

“Me specifically, or any doctor?” he looked up at Doctor Phim indicating his precise confusion.

Doctor Crusher was in hearing range, and she let out a little gasp. Troi put a hand on her shoulder.

“He needs a neuro-cyberneticist,” Phim clarified. “Your personnel file says you worked on neural net grafts and have been helping the Daystrom Institute with cybernetic research involving brain implants.”

“Yes, as a side project,” he said, feeling Captain Riker’s consternation and stress through every inch of him as he rose to his feet. “What’s the diagnosis?”

“Not here,” said Phim firmly, and turned as if to leave. “On the ship.”

Panic set in. Suddenly he felt as if he were being lured into a trap. Setting foot on a Starship when he was still a ‘person of interest’ with Starfleet Intelligence, after the lecture by Ross, was not a good idea.

“My infirmary has a full neuro-surgical suite,” he stated anxiously. “Bring him on board and we can work there.”

Phim considered him for a moment sternly. He felt tense, as if she was about to call him out on his fear overcoming his concern for his patient.

“I’m jealous,” she admitted with a smile. “I haven’t had a need to install more than a basic neurosurgery laser on board the _Destiny_ …”

Any stress he had been feeling about the situation immediately slipped away and he comfortably defaulted into ‘shop talk’ mode. Had he really become that paranoid?

“I had a patient, who had a need, so I took the time out to build one,” Bashir admitted, and her eyebrows rose pointedly.

“When this is over,” she said, and they walked to his infirmary together, “I’d love your help getting a better set up on the _Destiny_. Top of the line ship...but not so much in the way of specialized equipment...”

Julian almost had to laugh, but kept his voice neutral. Riker had stayed behind to go stand beside Troi, and the looks on their faces were severely grim.

_I can well understand how they feel. Two doctors casually conversing about equipment upgrades before performing life saving brain surgery would make anybody tense._

But Doctor Crusher knew, her look was pensive but understanding. It was sort of their secret language, that the best way to keep calm and focused during surgery was to get calm and focused _before_ surgery. Wild emotional expressions would only undermine the emotions of the doctor in the surgical suite. He had to be impartial.

A focused mind, and a focused hand, the ability to distance themselves from the emotions and concentrate on the patient’s medical needs, was the true unspoken talent of a surgeon. He couldn’t afford to do anything less than that, and the patient deserved nothing less than his very best.

Afterwards, he would indulge in the emotions. Afterwards he would think about the patient on the table, the reasons why he had been there, and the kind bedside manner Julian was known for would take over.

But for now, he was on autopilot, and would soon be making precise cuts and carefully calculating each delicate motion of his fingers.

Emotionless, focused, precise.

Like an android.

\-------

“Captain Picard is now in surgery,” Captain Riker said, slumping into a chair in the wardroom, giving both the man on the viewscreen and the other person in the room a respectful nod. “I don’t know what Doctor Bashir can do, but he’s the only one in the sector with any experience in cybernetic brain implants…”

“Yes,” said Major Kira, sitting up fully in her seat where she had been sitting and talking to Ross before he had come in. “He saved Vedic Bareil. People now call it the First Miracle of the Kaj.”

Riker smiled. He had read the report whilst studying Bashir’s cybernetics history, and despite the patient passing away, the whole situation had sounded rather miraculous. Troi, who had followed him in, was now settling down into the chair next to him, her face concerned and stressed.

“So now we wait to learn if he survives surgery…” she said calmly. “Doctor Bashir feels very focused right now.

“He’s one of the best,” said Ross, and he quickly and mercifully changed the subject. “We’re sending as many ships as we can to the Badlands, but we can’t turn our back on the Dominion. They could use this crisis as an opportunity to strike. I’m open to opinions on what we should do next.”

“We need to get _Destiny_ ready and back into battle,” Riker sat forward. “ _Enterprise_ and _Destiny_ are sisters, if there’s going to be a ship that can match it, or replace _Enterprise_ in the fleet, its _Destiny_ …”

“I understand…” said Ross, looking sad. “I know another ship that might be a good fit…The _Titan_.”

“The Titan?”

“Prometheus class...We’ll be upgrading her engines according to the new design as well. Its one of the only older ship classes we have that are compatible with the new design. But she should give you no trouble with that Faction ship if the new engines are all they’re cracked up to be.”

Troi sat up, looking confused.

“I don’t understand…You won’t be remaining the Captain of the _Destiny_?”

“When Captain Picard recovers from his injuries, he’ll still be heading the fleet, and the flagship has always been the _Enterprise_ ,” Ross looked concerned as he put his hands in front of his face. “ _Enterprise_ has always been the name we have given to the most advanced ship in the fleet. At the moment, the _Destiny_ is the most advanced ship in the fleet. Even with other ships given the upgrade, she’ll still be the most advanced. So he’ll be taking her.”

“What about _Defiant_?” said Kira, sitting up fully, concern on her face. “Will it be getting the same upgrades?”

“This new engine design is not compatible with smaller ships,” Ross smiled. “But _Defiant_ is really already a well designed ship, much more maneuverable currently than the large ships.”

“We owe everything to that little ship,” Riker smiled. “So now we work on upgrading the Destiny…We still have the schematics on board, we just need new parts.”

All the upgrade supplies for _Destiny_ had been destroyed in the station explosion.

“I’ve already contacted Utopia Planetia’s shipyards to start constructing a new core, and they say it will take three weeks…” Ross said. “How long until you can finish repairs and start the upgrades?”

“ _Destiny_ doesn’t have a chief engineer yet, she came to us with a skeleton crew on board. It's just a matter of picking out a new crew from those on the station.”

“Likely all _Enterprise_ personnel will be re-assigned to the _Destiny_ ,” Ross said. “I don’t see us being able to retake the _Enterprise_. The most likely outcome now is that the ship is completely destroyed.”

“They showed us that they were willing to fight to the death, they aren’t likely going to surrender now.”

Silence filled the air, and Ross seemed to consider.

“Until Picard recovers you are still the _Destiny_ ’s Captain,” Ross said, and sighed. “I must now ask you to begin a full investigation. Question every person who was on that station and the _Enterprise_ , and make sure Counsellor Troi is with you, because,” Ross took a deep breath, as if bracing himself. “We have to now consider every genetically engineered human as possibly being a member of a Faction, and they are very very difficult to identify without forcing genetic testing. Which is illegal...”

“But which Faction?” said Riker, feeling his ire suddenly rise. “We can’t blanket suspect every person of an entire race of culpability in one terrorist attack.”

Major Kira actually smiled when he said this.

“The ironic thing is, a genetically engineered human is now operating on Captain Picard…” Troi said. “I have always considered him trustworthy and his mind is highly open and honest. I have never sensed anything suspicious from him. Should we now consider him a suspect?”

“I’m sure that’s what Novos wants,” said Ross. “But any accusation against the Kaj of Bajor comes with problems,” he seemed to be looking over at Kira now, and the Bajoran woman smiled knowingly.

“If Bajor is to stay allies with the Federation, full transparency is probably needed. Doctor Bashir is our Kaj, an important member of our healing community and an icon of our religion. He is also a Bajoran citizen. Any accusation against him will be considered an accusation against _Bajorans_. Not our government, our entire people. The same would go for Captain Sisko, in case you were wondering. The Kaj and the Emissary are the left and right hands of the Prophets. To deny their existence is to deny the Prophets.”

Riker smiled broadly. He had always rather liked the Bajorans and their religious beliefs.

“I find it fascinating that the religious leaders of your faith are now both human,” said Troi respectfully. “I wonder what you think of that.”

“Kai Opaka once told Sisko that the faithful should never look upon the faces of their own gods,” Kira said, leaning back in her chair contemplatively. “It’s something I still meditate and pray over.”

“Ancient humans worshipped gods that represented the archetypes of human experiences,” said Riker, now rather fascinated. “Our emotions, our identities, personified as gods with supernatural powers. But the Bajoran Prophets are real beings existing not that far nearby...it makes you wonder how much influence they’ve had over the cultures in this region of space...and possibly elsewhere.”

“I know what you mean,” said Kira. “When Julian was made Kaj he said that what he was the most curious to learn was whether or not the Prophets had ever had any presence on worlds besides Bajor, or Earth, or even the Klingon homeworld. If anyone is going to do that sort of study, it should certainly be the Kaj.”

“It certainly sounds like a good direction for him to go in. If he wants to be able to travel through Federation space, researching your religious history is probably his best bet, as he probably won’t be permitted to travel as a Doctor,” Ross said, sounding tense.

“What?” Kira looked alarmed. “But he’s a Bajoran Medical Officer now…and the CMO of this station!”

“For the time being, as long as Bajor is not a Federation world, he’s safe here. But I had to scramble to cover for him Major...His decision to start the Selelvian research has Starfleet Medical all throwing up the walls against him ever practicing medicine ever again anywhere in the Federation.”

“Why?” Kira said, sitting up fully, and Riker could quite understand her confusion.

“Because it involves the use of genetic engineering,” Ross sighed. “Specifically on embryos and unborn infants. Genetic tinkering on fetuses has been illegal since the Eugenics wars, and nobody is willing to compromise. Not even Selelvia itself. But their government is willing to promise anything to stay in our good graces and under our protection...I’m sure they would accept any cure or treatment that Bashir is able to develop if it can be proven to work well.”

“I would have assumed that since genetic engineering of children on Bajor is such a sore subject, there wouldn’t be legal room for him to even do so,” Riker said.

“Well, there’s a bit of a loophole,” said Kira. “We only ban genetic experiments that are _proven_ to be harmful or painful to the patient. I think the counsel has been talking about changing that.”

“Which means he doesn’t have a lot of time before that loophole is closed,” said Ross. “Nonetheless, if he wants to practice medicine outside of Bajor, he’ll have to drop the genetic engineering research, or he leaves his medical degree behind him at the border.”

Riker sat back, and thought about this carefully, and put his elbows on the table.

Selelvia. He knew nothing about medical research, or the politics or legal issues behind it. But he knew the Rot was incurable and devastating and painful, and Doctor Crusher had firmly dropped any idea of finding a cure after her first week of attempts. She had been crying when she had admitted she couldn’t go any further.

He wondered if this, maybe, was the reason why she had stopped.

“Odo to Major Kira…” the gruff voice came over their combadges suddenly, and he was grateful for the break in their tense discussion.

“Kira here.”

“Major, there is something on the promenade that you have to see. And if Captain Riker is with you, he should come as well...”

“What is it Odo?”

“Well, I think I’ll let the situation speak for itself…”

Riker looked at Kira and Admiral Ross chuckled a bit.

“You’d better let me know what happened,” he said. “My ship will be arriving in two days, Captain. We’ll talk more when I arrive.”

Ross signed off, and Troi took a deep breath.

“We’d better go see what’s going on,” she said, but she was smiling. “I sense something interesting is happening right now down there.”

\----------

“Good morning Deep Space NIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE!!”

Songbird’s voice carried over the speakers and many voices laughed as he jumped up onto the small platform he’d beamed onto the promenade and put his hands in the air. He knew the ancient movie reference would probably go over their heads, but he didn’t care.

“Welcome everyone to the first ever USO show in hundreds of years, coming to you here right now on Deep Space Nine! All donations go to the Bajoran War Orphans Fund,” he pointed to the tip jars at the corners of the platform, and laughed. “Is everyone ready to be entertained?”

He knew there was a reason he had gotten a license to entertain on the promenade, and this had to be it. It was just destiny. Hundreds of Starfleet officers, in uniform, and the one or two children on the promenade looked delighted beyond measure by the sudden warm and welcoming stage show.

He noted Odo near the side, looking vexed and tapping his badge and knew he had to clarify the conditions of this performance or he could be in very big trouble.

“On pre-Federation Earth it was once the custom for musicians to travel to war torn battlefields to provide entertainment and charitable services to lift the soldiers’ spirits,” he winced as a familiar Ferengi nearby hissed something at him. “But before I go on with the entertainment, I have been reminded that I am required to tell you that this performance is made possible by Quark’s Bar, Grill, Gaming House and Holosuite Arcade,” he winced a little internally at the ad, but managed to put on a big smile.

From there, he started on a complete set of 1940s era tunes, from a swinging rendition of ‘In The Mood’ on his piano to Bob Hope’s crooning ‘Thanks For the Memories’ and everything in between.

The joy in the air was almost palpable. He could almost feel in his bones the once miserable, cold, and aching sorrow of the _Enterprise_ , _Destiny_ and _Starbase 41_ crew members warming up to the more soulful and happy place he was bringing them to.

When he finally spotted Captain Riker near the back of the crowd, smiling so widely that his face might have cracked, Songbird knew he had struck exactly the right chord needed for not only the songs he was singing, but for the audience he was playing for.

It was not the applause that followed his performance that sent his heart soaring through the rafters of the station, nor the money donated in the little jars by his feet, but the smiles on all their faces.

He knew many people would be humming the tunes all day long, and he made a mental note to add these old songs to his list of potential song requests in the future for the bar.

It had been just the right medicine for this particular sickness. In his opinion, good music and good company was the best medicine around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't know until I wrote this that Prometheus class ships are actually more advanced than Sovereign. Lesson learned, I'll do my research next time.


	8. United And Divided

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting back into the swing of things I think. October is preptober, so I'll be juggling my fanfiction duties with my NaNoWriMo project, whatever that turns out to be. Usually its a combination of all the writing I do on all my projects in the month, but I really would like to write an original novel one of these days.

“Captain Picard?”

Julian Bashir looked down at the slowly reviving patient on his table, pulling off his surgical gloves to hand to the nurse beside him. The man was slowly rousing, but Julian was nervous that the procedure hadn’t worked.

“Captain?”

“Hmmm,” the older man’s eyes fluttered open, and he looked up at Doctor Bashir in confusion.

“Where…?”

“You’re in Deep Space Nine’s infirmary,” Doctor Bashir said, and allowed the nurse to help him off with his surgical gown.

It hadn’t been so messy a procedure that he needed to change just yet, but he felt good to be rid of it. It had been a very long surgery and a very very long day.

“What...I…?” he put his hand to his head where the temple monitors were still attached.

“Try to take it easy,” Julian said. “The Borg implants in your brain shut down and I’ve just removed them…you’ll be feeling strange for a little while and you need rest. If you have any pain of any kind, please let me or one of my nurses know right away…Jabara...”

“Removed them?” Picard touched the temple monitors as he slowly sat up, and the nurse patted his hands to remove them herself. “I was told they couldn’t be removed.”

“Medical science is always advancing…” Julian didn’t want to boast that he was the reason that it was possible for Borg brain implants to be removed, instead opting to explain the procedure he had first invented when he had saved Bareil. “In place of the implants, I grafted a positronic matrix, which replaces the broken connections between the hemispheres of your brain that had been cut off and controlled by the Borg implants.”

“I see…” Picard said. “So I won’t…?”

“...Have a connection to the Borg, no. Here, have a look if you aren’t squeamish,” he pointed to the tube of sterilizing fluid where they’d put the deactivated implants after removing them.

Captain Picard seemed to look at the implants as if he were looking at a strange and unknown creature in a jar. It was an expected reaction, he might not have even known what they looked like before they were installed.

Or perhaps, there was something else going on in his mind. His face, rather than looking happy, was stricken. Julian went over to his monitor and sent a silent request to security to contact Captain Riker and send him to sickbay, still talking to Picard as he went, so that the man knew the Doctor was still there.

“We also sterilized and destroyed any remaining Borg nanoprobes left in your bloodstream. You are now one hundred percent clean of Borg technology. Congratulations.”

Julian had the sad and humbled privilege of watching Captain Jean-Luc Picard cover his face with his hands and take a deep, hitching breath, hiding from them his relieved tears.

\----------

_Captain Picard is a man of incredible mystery…_

Ultraviolet slid his fingers along the shelf of curios in the Captain’s quarters, touching briefly on one object, scanning with his tricorder, and then moving to another. In order to keep himself busy, he had assigned Angel to help him search the ship crew quarters for non-replicable objects they could sell, for the money to bribe off people they needed to, or to buy the supplies they required that couldn’t be replicated.

And there were a surprisingly large number of objects here in Picard’s quarters, the man was an archaeology buff and many of these artifacts could go on the black market for a great deal of money. Everything they weren’t going to sell they were going to transfer to the ship’s energy stores. It was too much work and bother to collect everything and sort through it just for the fancy of ownership of specific items. If it wasn’t valuable, it was recyclable.

Ultraviolet had something special in mind though, for the small silver flute in its protective case he now came to. He knew a Faction member in the Thread who would kill just to hold the damn thing and he put it in his inner jacket pocket just in case.

_We all have our vices. We may need to bribe the pretty little peacock in the future. I know he’s spying for the Federation._

It was sort of a well known secret that the Thread liked having one person who gave information as well as shared information, to keep the Federation at bay. With the recent troubles with the Faction, the Federation had become more and more desperate to get more dangerously personal information from the Thread.

_At least Songbird knows not to name names. He’s very discreet and covers his tail. I’ll have to keep that in mind. Spider is a virtual unknown, how he became the leader of the Thread is anyone’s guess, but he’s promised to kick the Federation and the Dominion out, so hopefully we’ll be able to make use of it again soon._

He guessed that the Thread simply passed its ownership automatically onto any available free System Admin who was part of the coding and maintenance of the actual forums themselves, rather than the traditional Faction structure of a leader being voted by the members. A lot of other Factions used those forums as well, so the potential to become a member of more than one Faction was always there. He knew Songbird was now moonlighting, rather openly.

_Unity has a very interesting way of gathering members that have all completely disparate minds...I hope the good Doctor knows what he’s doing by joining them. If they pick him to be their leader, he’ll be the first openly pro-Federation leader of any Faction. His only rival right now is Tempest...who can’t run a Faction from such a vulnerable position, no matter how proven his skillset. If he doesn’t leave the colony soon, he might not leave at all..._

Ultraviolet picked up a small antique goblet of gold plated tin. Totally replicable, but totally valuable as an antique. But how valuable? He considered it.

_It won’t fetch much, sadly, this period of Zyrian history is mostly ignored even by Zyrians themselves…My apologies Captain, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few._

He raised the little metal goblet sadly in the air, and put it back on the shelf, before moving to the next object.

\---------

Angel found herself moving quietly through the ship towards the source of the ‘latinum’ reading that had come up in her tricorder, feeling a slight dread and ironic finality at the direction she was heading in.

She had come upon the medical wing and her tricorder couldn’t be wrong. It wasn’t the only source of latinum her tricorder had read, but it was the nearest. She had started on the obvious choice of latinum first to narrow in on before she started examining objects room by room, and momentarily regretted the choice. She took a soft deep breath, and focused herself, but nothing could really prepare someone for entering a morgue.

Silence. The bodies were on the tables in here where Jeeves had thoughtfully transported them when requested by Thistle. It was cool and ventilated here, and deciding what would happen to the bodies was going to be a group effort.

But Angel realized the crew would probably not care, they would probably just put the bodies in the matter recycler.

_Creepy...Chicken a la Starfleet?_

She could not enjoy the joke. She had never been social, but she was still human, and she knew the current disunity of their Faction had come partially from the people in this room. As few deaths as possible had been promised to a few of the members, but Angel certainly hadn’t bothered with a stun setting.

_Well, to be honest, I don’t think more than a couple people were using stun settings to start with. Starfleet really doesn’t do a good job teaching hand to hand combat skills. Not unless you specifically seek out that training the way I did..._

Speaking of getting under the skin, her tricorder beeped loudly to indicate her arrival and she frowned, looking down at the pale lifeless face of Lieutenant Commander Geordi Laforge.

_Go ahead girl, give him a scan…you put him here now do your job._

She took a deep breath and did a scan. It was definitely his eyes giving off the faint latinum trace. Artificial eyes couldn’t be replicated, had to be carefully crafted, and were probably very high maintenance, and expensive if they needed latinum as a liquid component. Latinum also sometimes caused hair loss so there was a risk from having even tiny amounts of it in your body. She connected to the ship’s medical library and saw that there were no other artificial eyes on board. Unreplicable. A small source of liquid latinum was kept in the med bay for maintenance of the eyes, and she took a deep breath.

Laforge had agreed to donate the eyes to a new owner in the off chance he died in the line of duty. He would not mind them finding a new owner. She wasn’t doing anything wrong by taking them. So why did she hesitate?

_Damn girl. You killed him, he’s gone, it's not changing anything to take something he doesn’t need anymore...Artificial organs are worth money on the black market!_

To her utter surprise she was trembling, she knew she wouldn’t be able to remove them herself. She took a deep breath, and then put together an idea in her head.

Well, they would have to do some security tinkering before any of them could use the medical hologram safely. She would start there by testing the program on the Commander and seeing how easily she could circumvent its security features. If she was right, the hologram’s personality AI was one of the weak points.

“Computer, activate the Emergency Medical Hologram.”

A momentary blip, a churring as the computer recognized she wanted the hologram to appear in the morgue, and the bald headed Holographic Doctor sprang to life before her.

“Please state the nature of the medical emergency.”

“All right doc,” Angel put her hands on her hips, and looked at the hologram squarely. “Here’s the deal…”

\----------

“Data?”

Captain Riker watched Doctor Julian Bashir, moving around well out of earshot in the other room, going over his instructions with his team, and then looked back at Captain Picard, confused at the words he had said.

“When Data was assimilated, the Borg Queen gave him senior security status over me in the collective. A higher ranking Borg drone can shut down any malfunctioning drone at any time or place in order to protect the hive mind. We were very lucky that Hugh passed notice the way he did. But…”

“But Data...he turned you off?” Riker was alarmed, but Picard seemed nonplussed.

“My guess is that his programming has been circumvented somehow…” Picard paused. “We don’t know entirely what happened on that ship, and until we do, I am asking you not to say anything to anybody. I want to give him the shadow of a doubt…”

“Risky,” Riker looked back over, but he was certain the Augment was well out of earshot, even for a man with advanced hearing. “Nacheyev has already put you to task for being assimilated in the first place.”

“Certainly, and she will be relieved that I am not anymore, though disappointed at the lack of potentially military uses of that connection,” Picard took a deep breath. “But I still remember being connected to the Borg, and how that program functioned. I think I may be able to find a way to communicate remotely, by computer, with Data. If we can shut him down remotely, restart him somehow…”

“Ah...his own systems will have a chance to remove any subversive programming that may have been put into place. And he may have a chance to retake the Enterprise.”

“Exactly.”

Captain Riker thought about this all for a moment. He had told the Captain everything that had happened since he had passed out, and then Picard had admitted to him what had happened to his implants. The idea of Data shutting Picard intentionally was much soothed by the fact that the Faction on board had probably circumvented his security in some way to make that happen.

“It makes sense, they would have needed someone with Command rank to override the station’s docking clamps. He could override Command again to secure the ship...”

“And then we could board.”

“I’ll pose this idea to Sisko and Jellico and see what they think. They are sitting out at the edge of the Badlands, with no way of knowing where the ship might be.”

“Will…” Picard looked at him, sitting up only a little. “We also do have to consider the possibility that Data is acting on his own as well…I’m giving him a shadow of a doubt because I know him, you know him, he’s a man of good character. But his programming has been changing drastically and who knows how vulnerable to suggestion he might have become.”

Riker took a deep breath and swallowed.

“No android has ever advanced as far as he has in artificial computer intelligence...he is not only unique, he is one of a kind.”

“If we can’t retake the Enterprise, we must destroy it…even if he is on board.”

“Agreed. I don’t think we’ll be able to rescue him otherwise...” Riker said. “But if he’s been circumvented, we have to consider that now he’s as much a threat as the _Enterprise_ in the wrong hands…”

“I never wanted to consider Data as being a weapon,” Picard put his hands on his face. “Now its likely that this is what he has become. I hate the very thought of it.”

Riker put a hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Get some rest sir, you look like you need it.”

“What is this 'sir' business now?” said Picard. “You are a Captain, call me Jean-Luc.”

Will smiled warmly, as wide as possible.

“Should I tell Beverly and Deanna you’re awake for visitors?”

“Not yet...maybe in a little while…”

Riker watched the Captain pull the covers up in a very uncomfortable way. Jean-Luc Picard hated being bedridden, and hated people seeing him bedridden. He had a feeling the man would ask to be relocated to crew quarters before accepting anymore visitors.

\----------

Scarlett lifted her head as the Captain briefly returned to the bridge, arms laden with treasures, stomping into the ready room, door shutting behind him without a word.

_He’s started inventory, at least that’s going according to the plan. Selling off the crew’s belongings will give our Faction some funds to throw around._

She input some new programming commands into the PADD in her hand, linked by cable to the shiny new panel she had installed for the Engineering controller, and studied the output on the panel cautiously. Everything was going smoothly now.

_Things are picking up. I think we’re going to be alright._

She was worried about their unity. Until she had met Angel, their Faction had just been a few scattered people on the Thread all with one common goal.

_Locate the Firebird. Pfft sure! Piece of cake! Just haven’t been able to do so for over thirty years!_

She admitted fully her own motives for being a part of this faction were selfish; she wanted an all augment society to live in and an important role to fill. But now she knew; it wasn’t all it was cut out to be. She was handed operations, still vital, not at the top, and not the second officer, he hadn’t picked one. It was typically the Operations officer. But their crew wasn't a typical crew. Starfleet conventions wouldn’t fly here. They had to be more malleable, and Ultraviolet had stated that outright when he had called them all equal and capable of any job.

While she knew she was severely ambitious, but she was also wise; there were too many powerful personalities in this Faction. All of them with leadership credentials of some kind. She wasn’t going to even entertain the idea of ousting anyone, or trying to get up top when there was really nothing more than a loosely Starfleet based ranking system and only seven crewmen. No competition really. Nobody was trying to get her job, and everyone was very very fiercely going to defend their own.

_It all depends now on Thistle, and if he willingly accepts his role. Dreamer is the first officer for now, because Ultraviolet wants it. If our Faction leader wanted us to abandon the saucer section of this ship and just go running with the star drive we would. That’s what I would have done. We’d be faster...and have less maintenance to worry about_

But she knew a _Sovereign_ class ship wouldn’t fare as well in battle with just its stardrive, since many of its armaments were incorporated into the saucer by design. She was defaulting to cut and run mentality because of their current battered state.

_Separating takes too much time, and it leaves you with less resources, and it's a point of vulnerability in the ship design. Better to stay in one piece. But this is taking too damn log!_

The monitor was done with its installation progress, and she moved onto the next, and felt her frustration momentarily growing.

_Dreamer is working on the core bay, Thistle and I are working on the upgrades...Jeeves is keeping us hiding in the cloud...and the Captain is working out our financial situation with Angel. But where’s Clover? Still in sickbay?_

Scarlett felt a momentary concern for the pregnant woman’s well being. What would life for a woman and her baby be like on a Faction ship?

_An augment woman’s instinct to protect their child is very fierce, and her emotions are going to be ten times stronger..._

Scarlett looked at her PADD, and considered how much more time the repairs would take. She put down the PADD and looked up.

“Computer, please locate Clover.”

\----------

The mirror in front of her was lying. She was sure it was. She was scrubbing and scrubbing her face and it was still red. It was lying! Dammit!

_Lying! You’re lying! The sonic shower worked dammit!_

Tears were blurring her vision as she scrubbed her hands raw with the scrunchy pouf, scrubbed her neck, her face. Soap suds were dripping down her skin, soaking her bra top, slipping over her wide belly and dropping onto the floor. The sink was as overflowing as her eyelids.

_Now I understand Shakespeare. Out damned spots indeed! Oh god!_

Clover threw the scrubber down in frustration, falling sobbing onto the ground. The memory of her old friend’s blood all over her face, his heart matter and skin tissue in her clothes and hair, could not be erased with soap and water.

_Geordi wasn’t stalking you, he was really lonely, and you didn’t do anything to dissuade all the messages he sent. And now he’s dead. You just watched her come up behind him, you knew she would kill him, you didn’t do anything to stop it!_

Nobody had been meant to die. Perhaps some security officers if the taking of the Enterprise hadn’t gone well. They had been planning to gas the ship as well, and transport everyone over to the station, but that hadn’t been possible, and Dreamer had to reverse course on the gas to save the station residents. It was supposed to be a deathless robbery.

_Who am I kidding? Everything went wrong from the start when I decided not to wait at home. Michael didn’t need me here, I followed him._

Her hormone levels had to be out of control now, she was sure of it. And she probably would have sat on the ground crying like a baby for hours if Scarlett hadn’t come into the bathroom in concern and found her there, in a puddle of soap water. Upon her arrival Clover choked and tried to cover herself.

“Girl,” Scarlett said, looking sad as she found a handy towel, blue and fluffy and wonderfully soft, to help wrap her up in. “My first baby sent my brain all over the place. It's gonna be alright. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“First baby? I didn’t know you had children,” Clover sat up, considering the beautiful blonde woman as she helped her up to her feet.

“Two,” she smiled wryly. “I was genetically engineered to be the perfect female companion for a man who had way too much money. I married him at sixteen, lived as his ‘secret wife’ on Orion for eight years, then ran away with my daughter and son to Federation space,” she shrugged. “Married a normal man, relocated to Earth. And then divorced again. But my kids don’t have advanced genes, I wasn’t designed to pass my DNA changes down. So I left them on Earth with him when our marriage ended.”

“That...must have been hard,” Clover couldn’t begin to imagine the pain of separation from a child.

“It was,” Scarlett seemed more embarrassed than sad in talking about her past. “Very hard. I had to decide if I wanted to bring two ordinary kids with me into the Faction, have them engineered against their will, deny them the stepfather they’d learned to love, or leave them in the Federation where they were happy. I chose to leave them. I have a lot of regrets, but I don’t think that’s one of them. I know they’re happier without me.”

Clover realized that Scarlett had led her out to the main room, and she had a moment to look around. This was the quarters of the former ship’s counselor. It was one of the largest suites on the ships, big enough for two and a half, and had one of only four personal crew bathtubs on the ship in addition to a sonic shower, which was why she chose it. She looked over at Scarlett, who had gone up to the replicator to make them some tea.

“Ginger lemon tea,” she said, and turned to look at Clover. “Preference?”

“Masala Chai…”

“We really are all a little different from each other,” Scarlett said, bringing her the requested drink. “Which is why I came to find you. Unity is going to be a problem on this ship.”

“Maybe,” Clover took the chai and sipped it thoughtfully. “Trust is going to be the biggest problem. We’re all blaming each other for something that was another Faction’s fault. And we’re all very new to this.”

“We’re also very quick to judge and very quick to temper,” Scarlett said, hitting the nail on the head. “It won’t work if Thistle and Dreamer can’t work together. I understand wanting to only have Augments on the ship. But we need to include him as an equal or he may renege on us. He’s too important to lose now.”

Clover considered this. Of all of them, Dreamer had most literally lost the most, and was giving his most. She was more inclined to accept the android as a crew member, mostly because she had worked with him on the _Enterprise_ in the past, and had been hearing about him in communiques with...Geordi.

Clover took a deep calming breath and nodded.

“I’ll have a talk with my husband, once I get myself sorted.”

“You picked a good place for it. Here, let's see if Deanna Troi had anything beautiful that might fit you. If not, I’ve been dying to get out of this damned Starfleet uniform.

Finding a friend on the _Enterprise_ , under these stressful circumstances, was unexpectedly wonderful. She planned to embrace it for all it was worth.

\--------

Silence. The darkness of the core bay was stifling. The humming of the ship’s systems in the background of his hearing as he concentrated on the modifications he was making to the walls and floors of the bay, the brackets that would hold the old core, and the containment fields to keep the core stable. His computer mind was focused on getting just the right measurements for the bay, calculating the exact numbers to replicate the materials to the sizes he needed. He measured everything repeatedly, ran everything through the ship’s computer twice, and diagnosed everything to the most precise calculation as he worked, until the warp core rack was completely stable, the energy shields were calibrated to the sharpest degree and the core bay was as tightly sealed as it could conceivably be.

_Stay on task...Focus._

Dreamer knew he was no longer the android he was. His decision to switch easily to referring to himself by a new name, a Faction name, was proof positive of this. Complex binary processes in his neural net now worked hard, trying to remain focused on keeping on task, the slightest miscalculation could ruin everything. His neural net was being pushed to its hardest limit as he ironically tried to keep even the tiniest bit of feeling from breaking through him, keeping his thoughts empty of all feeling as he worked.

Only when his task was complete, a full ten hours of work of welding and replicating without communicating with anyone, did he find a quiet corner of the core bay and sit down, and took a deep breath, and let go.

The flood of tears was the first thing he expected, and for once it made sense for him to cry. For once his reactions made sense.

_I’ve betrayed them all. I may have killed Captain Picard. I know that poor Lieutenant Barclay is dead...I don’t dare look at the list of the other people on the ship who passed away…_

Fear was filling him, dread, he knew he would have to look, he would have to see if Geordi Laforge was one of the ones who died. He hadn’t checked the logs. And there was no telling how many of his friends on the station had died.

_It wasn’t supposed to happen this way! My friends...oh my friends. You were supposed to be safe!_

Everything had gone wrong in ways they could not predict. The Children of Khan, and the people who had still remained on board...it hadn’t gone to plan at all. But what could he do but stay on task?

_If the Firebird doesn’t unite the Factions they will raise up armies of ships, clone Augment armies, by the thousands, and destroy each other. And drag entire star systems with them. The Federation will be bogged down in civil war. The Dominion will invade easily. Millions could die. But I have lost so many friends today, I just...I can’t…_

His breath hitched and he felt with irony the very real sensation of having a stuffy nose from crying so much. His creator had really gone out of the way to make him as real as possible. 

_And what if the Firebird cannot be found? What if he will not unite the Factions or they won’t all follow his lead? What if he unites them_ against _the Federation? How can there be peace?_

He had convinced himself that betraying everyone was for the greater good of saving the Federation. But he couldn’t see that outcome from where he sat. All he could see was Reginald Barclay’s cold dead eyes and the feeling of laughing, laughing at that dark dark joke Thistle had made.

_What is wrong with me?_

He closed his eyes, and felt the fever briefly returning to him, the sensation of boiling, of sweat on skin, of bubbling blisters, of fire under his feet. Soong hadn’t meant this; this sensation came from the Borg implants, which were designed distinctively from those used in humans. His implants had been designed to transfer the physical sensations from the non-existent flesh of a stolen crewman’s skin to his neural net. The flesh was gone, but those burning sensations, the last feelings of touch he’d experienced before the flesh had been removed by the gas, were the only sensations of touch he had ever experienced as a human would. The feeling of shivering, of air blown over skin, of goosebumps. Of pleasure, of dampness and moisture. The feeling of metal, cold to the touch, and then fire, the fire of the hot gas, burning, boiling, dissolving flesh...

_No, not again!_

Data took a deep breath, and finally gave in and activated the Firebird program, despite the malfunctions, and surrendered to the program fully, letting it do what it would. He couldn’t go on anymore, even if it meant the malfunctioning program destroyed his neural net and shut him down forever.

A fiery bird emerged in his consciousness, the burning flaming phoenix, rising around the skyscape of his mind and soaring upward, its song a burning song of yearning, calling out to him, thanking him for being released. The Firebird in his mind was being chained by the few remaining vestiges of the Borg assimilation, which he couldn’t remove without potentially destroying the Firebird program itself. It seemed this program, this Firebird, was not just a figment of a fictional memory or a dream, but an independent AI, a small ‘pet’ program meant to be there to guide him. If he’d activated the program before he would have known this.

 _You didn’t leave me alone Father...you_ meant _for me to have this...you...gave me a friend._

The Firebird moved to comfort him, the world inside his head being as real and three dimensional as the real world. He could feel its heat, but rather than burning him, the heat of the Firebird was a balm, the program now unleashing hundreds of other programs that had been kept captive under the literal firewall its presence created. The fever, the boiling sensations, the burning anger, all disappeared. His fever had been his body’s way of signalling that the program was ready, it was time to locate the Firebird. But until he had been able to feel emotions, until an emotion chip had been placed in his neural net, and came into full awareness, the program was designed to remain dormant. Something had gone wrong somewhere to prevent the program from behaving properly when he activated his emotion chip.

_My dream program was activated prematurely. It might have been that. So who is the Firebird? I still do not know for certain..._

He wasn’t going to share his new understanding with his new crew. He simply did not trust them not to abandon him once they had what they desired. The Brotherhood of Ashes were the ones charged by the other Factions with overseeing all aspects of the Firebird part of the treaty, and had reached out to him specifically for that reason. Hence their name. Firebirds rose from the ashes. But he had not joined immediately, watching their Faction activity for a while before deciding if it was worth the risks. He had reached the limits of what the Thread could do and he knew he needed more than one Faction involved to get the job done.

_I knew what I was getting into, I was not deceived about this Faction’s activities._

Ultraviolet was a very cautious man and most of what he had done had been kept secret until Dreamer had finally met Angel in person and he had recognized her from the Federation security reports. Only his android eyes were good enough to make that match at first site, her new appearance was very different from the security recordings. It had been easy then to calculate what the Faction had accomplished prior to his joining. It hadn’t been pretty, but it hadn’t been as bad as Rebirth. He had been very hopeful that this was the right choice.

_The Brotherhood needed a starship capable of standing up to the other Factions in case any of them decided that they weren’t going to abide by the treaty, and the Brahms chose the Enterprise. If I hadn’t agreed...would it have been some other ship…? Some other crew…?_

And there still would have been death. He mentally went through the calculations, the burning bird chained to his heart now making mournful comforting songs into his soul. Soong had given him this at least, this gentle representation of the importance of this program he’d been forced to carry around inside him all these years. The program that was now the most important thing in the galaxy.

It didn’t seem as if he was going to shut down by letting it run. Not until the Firebird program was delivered to its final destination.

_But my assimilation into the Borg has caused a fatal malfunction in the program, for certain. If the Firebird program chip is removed, it could cause a cascade failure from which I cannot recover. Without a doubt this could be the very last mission I ever complete._

Suicide. Data’s thoughts wandered back to his wife, and their adopted child, now bereft, the family he had abandoned on Vulcan where they would be safe, the family he loved and wanted to return to more than anything but couldn’t. Savil would grieve, perhaps the Vulcan counsel would still allow her to fully adopt Vinek alone.

But he could never go back. The fate of the entire Federation depended on him finding the Firebird. If Rebirth’s activities were any indication of the level of destruction one Faction was capable of doing in the Federation, then the thought of potentially twelve factions at war with all the weapons of their genetically engineered intelligence at their disposal, was a staggering one, and he recalled a piece of literature, a quotation, one that broke through all the doubts that had been going through his head.

_'It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.’_

The Firebird AI cooed, a soft angelic sound of comfort, and he resigned himself to completing this last mission, tears on his cheeks and a smile on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love the idea of Data having a tiny pet program inside him, a virtual 'Spot' that he takes everywhere with him.
> 
> The irony of using the code names with Augments is that you can't really fool an Augment. All the Factions are intelligent enough to calculate who anyone might be, the code names are meant to protect them from the Federation and other ordinary groups who might get in the way. It makes it even more amusing that Songbird uses the name Maestro, he's clearly not trying to hide from anyone!


	9. Sleeping Awake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to put in another update, despite starting another story for Halloween, because I am still thinking of this fic every day and wondering how I can improve it, to make people like it, maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like its not as popular as other parts in the series, I haven't gotten comments and that gives me a huge anxiety jump. I don't want to beg for comment, but I don't mind constructive criticism now and again so if there is something you don't like, don't be afraid to tell me either. <3

“Captain,” the First Officer had a tense look on his face as he turned to look at the woman he had addressed. “Are we going to engage?”

The Captain of the _Reverence_ , who called herself ‘the Moon’, sat back in her chair, observing the viewscreen from behind the curtain of her dark hair, brooding and feeling rather testy as she watched the patrolling Federation ships converging on the Badlands. It had been almost two days, but she knew they were getting very close to either finding their target or giving up their search. And now there were three of them.

“Today we observe, and see if the Brotherhood is clever enough to slip through the Federation net…” she crossed her hands together under her chin, elbows on her armrests. “Stay out of the sensor range of the Federation ships...they will be scanning for tachyons.”

She watched the starfield passively, but inside she was smouldering.

_So much failure, so many disappointments. First the colony, and now...if they fail with this..._

The humiliation of it still burned her, but she would get revenge soon enough. The girl she would leave alone, she was worthy of her Faction, but Tempest…

_Contemptible little partial thinks he’s clever. I’ll leave the colony alone for now, but once the Children make their move..._

Then again, the Children were doing what she had never had the courage to do. They were likely going to succeed; nobody else wanted those embryos. Shepherd’s willingness to share his Faction activities with her was telling; he was hoping she would lean towards him when the time was right.

But Rebirth was for the Firebird. She had made an agreement, and she would honor that agreement. As for her own Faction, well, there were splinter groups out in the stars that were likely targets for recruitment by other Factions, and she considered them carefully.

_Hm...not Darwin...likely the psi leaning Factions will try to snatch them up. If they can find a way around their little problem of quarantine...Moab IV?_

The Moabites were a very ordered society, and disliked outsiders. Every Augment in the colony was designed for a very specific purpose. She liked the idea of it, but in practice, it had proven a difficult colony to maintain without self-isolation. This would never do.

_Darwin is still too difficult. Their immune systems could be very easily weaponized, yes, but how to keep the weapon from attacking you?_

Her mind drifted for a while as she watched the ships drifting across her monitor.

_Moab IV it is, some of their people may come with us just to escape that place…_

But for now, she would watch...and wait.

\---------

“Locking clamps...disengaged…”

“Uncoupling sequence initiated…”

The chunking sound of moving servos and pistons shunting and rotating filled the air and Thistle sighed in relief as the core tube opened up above him. He looked up from his safely shielded bay to where Dreamer was floating gravity free over the core itself.

“Engaging micro tractor beams...”

A momentary blip, and two beams shot out to grab the top of the warp core. Warp cores were usually jettisoned down when removed, repairs usually being done with the core in place, it was rare that a core was relocated, and he watched the core slowly rising with a feeling as if the contents of his stomach were going with it.

It all depended on this. The core bays above the warp engine room were designed specifically and precisely to hold new cores to put into place after an old core had been shunted. The bays did have their own exits into space, but ejecting the core that way was slower, so it wasn’t preferred. But this was their plan, something they hoped the ships looking for them wouldn’t expect. The upgrades were their only advantage.

_If we can get them into place. Turn on a dime warp drive at your service sir!_

Dreamer was pulling now physically on the core himself to reorient it, and Thistle would have been more than happy to let him do this alone, but Dreamer still had that damn program in his head that they needed access to or everything was pointless.

“Easy Dreamer, slowly as it goes…”

The android didn’t even look up at the comment. It was more of a nervous comment than instructional anyways, Dreamer knew what he was doing. Thistle was just feeling anxious.

“Core bay temperatures are holding steady...engaging third tractor beam…” said Thistle, and input the next automated sequence of core maneuvers that would flip the core in the cramped space of the ejection pod and slip it into the bay. Any tiny fraction of gravity added to the mixture would destabilize the warp core and destroy them all.

 _At least we’ll know exactly how we died,_ Thistle watched Dreamer’s slow agonizing ascent up to the core bay, his sole purpose was to ensure all clearances were accessible as the core turned, and that it turned correctly. It was already in motion and there was no going back now.

The rest of the ship was likely very much aware of everything that was going on. They had disconnected engineering control and turned off the gravity in the engineering section and had blocked off any and all functions that could cause the warp core to become unstable. With little more to do than float out here in the biridion cloud on automatic pilot, the rest of the crew had decided to continue the inventory. Now only Jeeves was left on the bridge, keeping an eye out for trouble.

Thistle had read over intership comms that Captain Picard’s quarters had been most lucrative for sellable artifacts, and the medical bay was fully functional now for their needs. The medical hologram had been brought up to speed by Angel and completely locked down. It would not be able to contact Startfleet. Not that it could have, they had turned off all outside communications of any kind from leaving the ship. It cut them off from the Thread for the time being, but it was the best security defense against detection they now had. It was one point of vulnerability in their otherwise invulnerable ship that feedback static itself from any Federation ship trying to contact them could be traced. Like a phone receiver left off the hook.

_As if folks these days would ever understand that. You must have been watching too many old space movies. At least all they had to do in the movie was activate this gobbledygook technobabble device and everything worked. I have to actually know how every diode and transistor goes together._

“Core bay stability is at one hundred percent,” he called out the standard routine announcements of the computer for Dreamer’s benefit, but everything was going so well he could almost laugh.

 _All that anxiety and the core transfer went without a hitch…_ He watched with satisfaction as the old warp core was settled into its rack and secured by Dreamer.

It still wasn’t safe to activate gravity in this section of the ship. The core would need an anxiety rising hour to cool down and settle its contents before he would feel safe with that.

He did feel safe crossing the empty gaping socket of the ship’s warp drive to approach the bay. Once he was certain the core was safe and secure they could start working on the upgrades.

It would take a long time. Dreamer popped out from behind the resting core on its rack and approached him.

“I would suggest we set a motion detector in this bay immediately to alert us to any movement of the core…”

“Good idea, and we can get started on the upgrades right now,” Thistle went to examine the core himself once over, and nodded. “Yep, all good…I just hope it's this easy to get rid of it when we leave…”

Dreamer didn’t respond to that, he was waiting for Thistle to join him so that they could close and seal the bay doors. It was a blessed relief to have the bay doors seal and shut and all the readouts show normal. The sensor was doing its job and no shifting was noted.

But Dreamer had a very strange look on his android face. It was almost...anxiety.

“Problem, Dreamer?”

“I have felt concern for my own existence before...but as you pointed out, to be such a vitally important part of the mission...makes me consciously aware at all times of any small thing that could end my life.”

“Paranoia?” Thistle almost laughed. “An android that feels paranoia. Well, please don’t, I’m paranoid enough for the both of us. What say we find the girls and get started on those upgrades now hm?”

Dreamer looked at him, and there was another strange look in his eyes. One he wasn’t expecting, and hadn’t considered possible for an android to feel.

Resolution. Acceptance of the inevitable. As if the fight had left him, and he _knew_ this android had some fight in him. It was a feeling that gave Thistle a moment to pause. If Dreamer had resigned himself to his fate, that gave him a very serious cause for concern. This man was their first officer.

A suicidal android would be a very serious problem. A homicidal android was useful, but potentially dangerous to them all. But an android void of all independence and self-determination?

_Just another tricorder...what did I say? A computer is a computer. He’s defaulted to just following orders. Ultraviolet made a mistake. But we’ll see, we’ll see. He might not have the creativity, vision and drive of humans, but when strapped for options…_

Enough. There was too much work to do and too little time to do it in. He wanted to talk to Leah about all this anyways, she was very particular and would untangle any flaws in any of his arguments very quickly. It was a personality trait many people discarded as ‘unfriendly’ but it was something about her that he treasured. Perseverance and perfectionism were things he admired in others, there was no room for flailing about the world like a gesticulating chorus conductor with his baton.

He wondered if Dreamer felt that way. The man was married to a Vulcan. Perfectionism must have been something he very well understood.

_Then again, if you’re an android marrying a Vulcan, you aren’t looking for perfection, you are looking for self-justification._

It just couldn’t hold a candle to him and his Leah. When they got working together, on a design, on an engine, there were no two more compatible people. Two halves of the same brain, left and right, working in perfect combination.

Could an android understand or experience that? Had he?

_Damned I’m curious. Maybe I should just ask him myself? I mean it's not like I could offend him any worse than I already have..._

\--------

“Altogether we’ve tracked sixteen stable biridion clouds currently formed in the Badlands. The smallest is four thousand meters, the widest is over a hundred miles wide…”

Sisko leaned back in his seat and watched Dax as she meticulously input more information and received feedback from the sensors.

“I suggest this search pattern, if we’re going to search them all…” Dax brought the map up on the main viewscreen unprompted.

Sisko knew she was probably feeling frustrated that they were still searching. They all were. The _Enterprise_ was invisible, nonexistent, maybe not even in the Badlands anymore, it could slip by them unnoticed through large expanses around the edge of the Badlands that they weren’t yet able to close in their net. Only the constant patrol of the three ships in their posse was soothing to his soul.

“Transmit this data to _Cairo_ and _Farragut_. And to station DS9. Keep them apprised of all our search activity out here.”

“Sir, do you think they’re still here?” Nog asked hopefully. “It seems so unlikely.”

“They were pretty badly damaged, Ensign,” Chief O’Brien said immediately. “That nacelle is gonna be a problem.”

“Any idea of what they will do?” Sisko asked, watching as his crew by default turned to look at him, all of them frustrated from scanning and searching and still having no answers to the major question of the day: where in space was the starship _Enterprise_?

“They would need a month to repair that damaged nacelle, I guess they’d ditch it, or completely disable it and compensate with the other. They’ll be stuck under warp 5 either way.”

“I’m more concerned that they may be planning an offensive of some type,” Dax input her own two thoughts. “Biridion clouds are highly unstable, let alone all the plasma storms, the Badlands is a bad place for a fight in general…”

“If they are as interested in martyrdom as they claimed, they will make a stand here,” said Worf. “But if they have a different goal in mind, than they would carefully plan out their next move. We must be prepared for anything.”

Sisko thought about this.

“And then there’s the upgrades,” Chief O’Brien said. “They may take the time to try and install the new warp drive that didn’t get done before the ship was stolen. They have everything they need on board.”

“How long would that take them?”

“With a crew of seven people, about eight to ten days…” O’Brien looked like he was really going to regret the next words out of his mouth before he spoke them. “But we have to assume that these people are genetically engineered. Stronger, faster, smarter, and I can’t imagine they need the same amount of sleep. I’d cut that number in half. Or a third...”

“Three days...” Dax breathed. “It might take us that long just to find them. And they’ve already had time to get started...”

It was a dim prospect. _Sentinel_ ’s report of the warp capabilities of the ship that attacked them had become the focus of his every waking nightmare. He couldn’t imagine what dozens of ships like that could do to the Federation fleet, let alone two in the hands of the Factions. The weapons were the same, the shields were the same, everything was the same as every other ship in the fleet. But a fraction of a microsecond faster turning dodging and firing time was the difference between victory and defeat.

“We need to amp up our patrol. Start moving into the Badlands for our sweep of those biridion clouds and tell DS9 we need more reinforcements, as soon as they can send them.”

“Yes sir!”

Cadet Nog’s enthusiasm was a very hopeful note in their very hopeless situation. Sensor range in the Badlands was severely limited, sensor ghosts and shadows were everywhere, echolocation and the tachyon tracing technique would be their only strong methods for finding their prey, who would be completely invisible in a biridion cloud with their cloak up.

_Their achilles heel is going to be their confidence, their inability to see themselves as anything other than correct. And mine? I almost never back down. I hope they understand that quickly, because unless they surrender to me they are not getting out of the Badlands alive._

\------------

“Do you know any Trill songs?”

Songbird lifted his head feeling highly amused, the petite Trill science officer standing in front of him making him immediately think of a song that he knew would be right up her alley.

“You should have seen the concert on Starbase 43...”

“Yeah,” the woman shrugged. “I wish I could have been there. I heard it was good…”

“Hm,” Songbird considered for a moment. “I could get you an advance ticket to my next concert. Though I don’t know when the heck that would be…”

“I would like that,” she said, and nodded her head in time with the popular song. He knew any other Trill on the station would have come running if they knew this was playing, it was that well received on their homeworld. “My name is Ezri by the way, Ezri Tigan.”

“Oh, the _Destiny_ ’s counsellor, well in that case…” he inserted a few minor variations that wouldn’t too change the piece but would probably make it a unique experience. “Tell Quark and Shavi, my manager, that I said VIP access at the usual discount for my friends. Just don’t tell anyone else,” he winked at her. “A lot of people will come begging me for cheap tickets.”

She laughed, and actually tipped his jar before moving back in the direction of the bar. Ezri Tigan. He’d write that down and tell Shavi himself later. He didn’t know why, but he felt it was important to him to do something nice for at least one member of the _Destiny_ crew, besides that impromptu concert. They had been through so much.

And speaking of his concert...

“Hey, I heard I missed a great concert?” said Julian Bashir, making his way over to him with a smile on his face. “Play something from it for me next?”

Songbird looked up from his keyboard and smiled. His husband was looking exhausted, scuttlebut amongst the crew was that he had successfully completed surgery on the _Enterprise_ captain, and should have been in his quarters sleeping now. He had probably just come back from briefing Captain Riker, who had taken command of the station until _Destiny_ was repaired and Admiral Ross arrived. Major Kira had been in Quark’s earlier complaining loudly about not being the one in charge. But she hadn’t sounded like she’d minded too much so maybe she liked Captain Riker.

“One old crooner coming right up,” he said, switching over to a Frank Sinatra song.

Songbird knew Julian would wait until he finished his set so they could go home together. Of course he was going to play a love song for his husband, even if it was the dance hour. Julian pulled a chair from a nearby table up beside the piano and sat on it, his eyelids drooping a little as the lyrics washed over him.

“…When we met, I felt my life began,” he sang the words easily, they spoke so well to their sudden marriage and immediate attraction. “So open up your heart and let this fool rush in…”

Julian chuckled, and nodded softly with the music.

“I heard a few minutes ago that they’re still on patrol out there looking for the _Enterprise_ …” Julian turned to look at him and his face was stricken. “I’m not really certain I like the idea of them just waiting around watching the Badlands, with the Dominion so close by. This may not be a fight we can win.”

“Julian,” Songbird felt his own anxiety and changed over to a quiet tune so they could talk without having to raise their voices. People were starting to leave the bar anyway, much to Quark’s dismay.

“I just feel, well, I was thinking about what you said two days ago, about Unity and the Thread…nobody is going to learn anything about them from the Thread now…”

Songbird paused. Both of them had been lying in bed, before the _Enterprise_ had shot off like a bat out of hell, and Julian had been going over his Thread messages before going to sleep. Watching a new user navigate the Thread was always fun, he’d missed out on showing everything to Garak, who had created a name and then dismissed him from any involvement, to his own distress. Julian was different. He could look over his lover’s shoulder and see what he was writing, and it was usually something to do with medicine. His username of TeddyBear was the most adorable thing in the world, hands down, as far as Songbird was concerned.

But that night he’d lifted the PADD up to show him something, and he’d taken the time out to show him a few members of Unity that maybe hadn’t revealed their identities to anyone yet. Songbird wouldn’t be a very good spy if he didn’t know who was who in the Factions.

_“Well if you know them all,” said Julian pointedly. “You could just tell Starfleet…”_

_“No.”_

_He cut him off completely._

_“But this would all be…”_

_“Julian...there are people whose lives would end if I named them to Starfleet. Whether Starfleet meant them to die or not. Imagine the Dominion Changelings overhearing one admiral talking about a Romulan member...and telling the Romulan leadership as a way to get closer to them? We don’t share real names with anyone. That’s why Marshall got his sorry ass kicked off the Thread…”_

_“I suppose...it just seems like if Rebirth is going crazy, knowing who they are would help catch them…”_

_“How? And who would you blame for what? Not everyone in Rebirth is a fanatic like their leader. Rebirth has a whole colony of normal genetically engineered humans they protect. Not all Faction members are out doing political activity or being terrorists. Some of them are valets,” he grinned and held out an imaginary hand bag. “May I take your parcel sir?”_

Julian had been unable to stop his smile at that. Songbird always knew how to make people laugh. But Julian wasn’t laughing now, he was considering.

“I’ve been interested in Unity mostly because I know a few of their members...but their location is already well known by now, I mean not just to you, but to Starfleet, probably the other Factions, the Dominion, everyone now, even if they don’t know their Faction name. They probably do. Maybe we’re going about this all wrong with the Thread…with security. Anyone can read what we write!”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, all you have to do is get on the Thread and request to join. If you are intelligent enough to understand Spiral, which we know the Dominion is. All the Unity people are currently on Colony 53, all talking about the same issues. It won’t be long until the Faction is cut off from the Thread by Starfleet. We need a network that can’t be joined easily, or spied on, or cut off by others. I was thinking...well it's a bit outlandish but working on the Captain made me think...of the Borg hive mind.”

Songbird started. Anybody else might have thought he was out of his mind. But he knew exactly what the man was talking about before he even spoke it.

“Having everything all in one place easily accessible is a vulnerability. The Thread needs to be more difficult to get access to. As a free forum it's wonderful, but for security it's terrible.”

“The Borg hive mind isn’t dependent on a single Borg drone because each Borg is the Borg, a single Borg could start a new collective, they have all the basic software already installed…”

Songbird thought about it quietly. Spider had been concerned about how few backup servers they were currently maintaining.

“If the members themselves became the Thread access...It would be hard on more vulnerable people who can’t communicate in person with others to get access but…”

“But we wouldn’t have to worry about policing every single connection to see if the Federation or Dominion or Romulan empire is piggybacking a connection,” Julian said. “What form could this take?”

“A PADD, maybe. I think that would be a job for the Tinker Faction to work out,” said Songbird, changing the tune he was playing to something popular in hopes of people being lured back into the bar. He knew Quark wouldn’t tell anyone what they were talking about, so he didn’t feel concerned now. “They’ve been looking for an excuse to use Borg tech for something. But it does all make sense…have the Faction members bring a secured device to you and that device would already have all the security built in place. And if access to one communications frequency was cut off, just move to another. Like the Borg.”

“Well...it was just something I thought of,” Julian smiled. “Unity has enough trouble right now on the colony…I wish they were here instead…”

“You’re worried about your friend,” Songbird switched his keyboard to a different register, already resigned that he would be communicating with the Tinkers and Spider about Julian’s idea later when he returned to their quarters. “I think he’ll be all right. Colony 53 is very secure right now. But very heavily Federation controlled, and a lot of the Factions won’t stand for that.”

“Someone will have to stand for it,” Julian’s eyes took on a steely glint, and Songbird felt himself shiver at the firm determination and anger in his husband’s voice. “The sheer disdain and contempt for life from both sides so far is disgusting.”

“Well, that is what Unity is trying to do as a Faction right? Unify all humans, advanced and ordinary, coming together as equals. Though they haven’t done it very well.”

“Well look at the amount of prejudice they are up against,” Julian seemed so bereft. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the non-human members started leaving the Thread. If Augments can’t get around our xenophobia and prejudice for ordinary humans, and ordinary humans continue to fear us, how are we ever going to get along with the _rest_ of the galaxy? Forget the Eugenics wars, we’d be looking at the Occupation of Bajor all over again. But humans would be responsible. I won’t stand for it. We have to do something now.”

“Well not tonight, because I’m tired,” Songbird laughed. “And let's start with a more secure way for Unity to communicate because almost the entire Faction is on that colony and everyone knows what they’re talking about including Starfleet. We need privacy.”

“We?” Julian smiled knowingly.

“I’ve been known to moonlight on occasion…” Songbird shrugged. “The Thread has the advantage of being the Faction that everyone needs to communicate with in order to communicate with every other Faction. If we can’t fix the security now, we may lose that advantage.”

Songbird clocked out for the day, Quark didn’t put up much of a fight due to the abysmally empty state of his bar, and left feeling as if he’d put in a good day’s work even if he wasn’t on tour like he wanted to be. Julian talked quietly to him as they walked along the promenade. It was strangely busy for almost twelve o’clock midnight. Starships coming and going weren’t always arriving at local timezones.

“Captain Riker to Doctor Bashir, do you have time to talk?”

Julian moaned, he rolled his head back and hit his badge almost angrily.

“Sir, I haven’t slept in almost two days, I need sleep too.”

“About how much sleep? How long can an Augment go without sleeping?”

Songbird raised his eyebrows and Julian narrowed his eyes. One would have assumed that Riker wanted to discuss Captain Picard’s recovery, not an Augment's rest patterns. Julian seemed to think about it, then sighed.

“Five days is the longest I’ve been able to stay awake. That was in the Dominion internment camp under stressful circumstances…And I was able to stay alert the entire time. Functional, I can’t say for certain, but I was able to fight when...when the time came for it.”

“Five days…” Riker’s voice seemed to consider this horrible, but his response was little relief. “Get yourself some sleep. I’ll brief you in the morning about why I asked.”

“Thank you sir, Bashir out,” Julian gave Songbird a soft look. “What amount of sleep do you think I’ll need before I’m up to talking to him again?”

“Why do you ask?” Songbird felt the sly intent implied.

Maybe it was the thirties music he had been playing, or the Starfleet officers wandering about the promenade and the recent mindset of war that people had been in, but Songbird found himself suddenly swept away to the ancient past of swing music and big band and crooning wartime love songs as he was swept up into Julian’s arms, their lips coming together in a passionate kiss. He felt like he was in a movie, a story from a bygone era, and he certainly had no trouble with performing in front of an audience.

_Now if I could only get off this station. Unity is useless if we can’t spread our message. Without the concert, we’ll need the Thread to be more secure than the bank accounts of the Grand Nagus himself!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found a very huge plot hole in my story, in that Starbase 41 was the place I had Songbird having his concert in orbit of Trill, and also the Starbase 41 that was destroyed, which was a paradox, because why wouldn't they evacuate to Trill instead of Bajor? So I'm going to say that the Starbase near Trill is 43 instead of 41 and I'll fix the past chapters at another time. I just don't do well with numbers or time, and everything I've given, hours, days, minutes in my story is all guesswork by me, I haven't got a clue about how much time anything would take, I'm not Trekkie enough to know these things and I hurts me. (Is anyone Trekkie enough to know how long a warp core takes to replace? Don't answer that, I'm afraid to find out!)


	10. The Revenge of Lewis Zimmerman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bwahaha! I can write this again. I have found my inspiration!
> 
> WARNING: Major character death ahead! (I hate spoilers but I also hate triggering people, so just know that this way there be monsters.)

“I’m sorry Jean-Luc,” Admiral Ross’s face was a mask of concern. “I've thought it over, and the risk is too great, I don’t know if I can approve of the plan you’re putting forward to try and contact the Commander…”

“But it could work…”

“It could, but we have little time. With the Dominion showing signs of activity nearby we need people back on patrol. We destroy it and cut our losses...if we can find it…”

It was so final. Kira Nerys sat back, watching the play of emotions on Captain Picard’s eyes, the confusion and disappointment were the greatest.

“We don’t even know where it is to destroy it,” Captain Riker said, “If we could get this plan implemented in the meantime during the search?”

“If you can find the time to set up what you need, it would have to be on board the _Defiant_ , we aren’t risking the _Destiny_ in her current state. I want _Destiny_ brought back to the shipyards at Utopia Planetia. I managed to get her bumped up to priority order to upgrade, she’ll be ready to run in under a week after she reaches Mars. And I’ve got two more ships coming your way to join the search, the _Archimedes_ and the _Titan. Titan_ , as I said before, is basically _Destiny_ ’s equal in terms of battle capabilities. _Destiny_ has a bit more speed, _Titan_ a bit more durability. You two Captains can fight it out over who gets which. But I've reassigned the rest of the _Enterprise'_ s crew to those two ships and you can grab whichever _Destiny_ officers you need to make up the difference. A skeleton crew can bring her to the shipyards.”

Kira felt her heart lurch at this a little. The _Enterprise_ and _Destiny_ crews had been working so hard to try and get the battered _Destiny_ back to order for the trip back to Sol system. But few of them would be on board.

"Sounds good to me. I have a young trainee counsellor I'd like to bring on board _Titan_ ," said Riker, already deciding on a ship. "She can learn the ropes from Troi."

"You get to be with her on the same ship after all," said Picard, clearly agreeing to take command of the _Destiny_ as Ross had previously predicted.

"Well, you've already sat in _Destiny_ 's chair, so it was kind of like,” said Riker and he smiled at Picard almost jokingly. “...destiny…”

The pun made everyone chuckle a bit. But there was a sadness in the other Captain’s eyes that spoke volumes as to how desperately he wanted his own ship back, the _Enterprise._ She couldn’t blame him.

“All right, I give you until we find the _Enterprise_ to try and implement your plan, good luck to you both, and Major Kira, I’m putting you back in charge of DS9. Let me know as soon as those ships arrive. And good luck to all of us.”

* * *

“Just what do you two think you're doing?”

The Scottish brogue caught Scarlett by surprise and she jumped up to her feet and laughed. She had a fancy scarf on her head from Troi’s wardrobe, and was wearing a beautiful wine red bodysuit that probably did better things for her curves than wearing nothing could have. She felt sexy, like dynamite, in this outfit, and it was so comfortable it was like swimming in velour. She didn't feel the least bit guilty for this brief diversion.

“Come one now, don’t tell me you don’t want to change out of your uniforms?” Scarlett danced around the room. “Riker shared these quarters with his fiancé, I bet you he had some sweaters or something, change, feel a bit more comfortable, and less Starfleet.”

She could tell that Thistle was in a rather thorny mood, much like the country whose flower he had chosen for his moniker. But Dreamer seemed to be thinking about it for a moment, and he removed the jacket of his uniform and put it on the back of the puffy arm chair that he sat on.

“There is something to be said for the idea of ‘stripping down’,” he said, and she wondered if he understood the double entendre in that comment. “A more casual dress can foment a more comfortable working relationship.”

“Really?” Thistle seemed intrigued and amused by the idea. _He_ had caught the unintended joke at least.

“Michael…”

The voice of Clover was enough to change the man’s expression, features softening completely. Troi had kept some maternity clothes in her wardrobe, had been pregnant once, and was probably hopeful of a second child, and so Clover came out wearing a robe wrap of blue, with a tie off at the waist, and smiling in a way that showed whatever her previous distress, it was totally gone. She sat down on the couch, and Michael went over to sit beside her.

“All right hon?”

She nodded, putting her hands on her stomach. He touched her belly wonderingly. She closed her eyes. And took a deep breath.

Scarlett and Dreamer both realized exactly what was happening a fraction of a second before Thistle banged on his combadge.

“Hey Angel, is that holodoc all safe yet? I think we’re gonna need him.”

* * *

Lieutenant Jadzia Dax peered down at the information packet sent by the space station, and sighed. Captain Picard had sent her a fundamentally huge data dump of Borg technology related information meant to help her replicate and duplicate Borg technology on this ship in hopes of resetting Commander Data. Doctor Bashir had helped her out by also sending complete schematics of the implants he had removed from the Captain’s head. And all Borg technology schematics and information that was accessible by the Daystrom Institute had been sent to her by Admiral Ross, last minute. With the note, ‘Do your best’.

She had already decided in her mind that it wouldn’t work, and it wasn’t long in unpacking all the data sets that she knew why. 

Borg nanoprobes were brilliantly adaptive and malleable. The ‘sleep’ command used to shut down a Borg hive in the past had already been accounted for by the Borg a long time ago and they had been working on their security since. No lower level Borg could ever shut down a higher level Borg period.

_But perhaps...if I became the Queen…_

They were using a dummy unit in a cargo bay to set up the transceiver needed for this contact attempt, and O’Brien was going over the unit piece by piece to make sure nothing could potentially escape. They would be replicating real Borg technology, as well as using real Borg system programming, to make this work. Anything related to the Borg tended to take over everything around it and was hard to scrub out of a system once in place. _Enterprise_ had learned that the hard way.

_I’ll set up a new hive with a Queen identity, and that should give me the ability to communicate with and override Commander Data’s implants. Only one thing could go wrong…_

She closed her mind and ignored the swearing of O’Brien and the ensigns as they worked over the unit. Only one thing could interfere with this entire situation.

_Borg promotion is automatic. If Data is now a Queen…_

If Data was now a Queen, with all the Queen protocols, they would fail. Although...Queens did communicate with one another.

_If he is a Queen, I could still communicate with him, even if I can’t shut him down…_

This thought strengthened her resolve and she got down to work.

* * *

Silence. The bridge was entirely too silent. The new panels with the bridge controls were sitting waiting for their users. Ultraviolet felt very much the forces of life and death hanging in the balance now as he watched _Defiant_ slipping closer on the viewscreen. It was so close, and yet still too far, just a little too far away to detect them here in this biridion cloud. But it wouldn’t be long until they arrived. Any motion by them would be detected. Death was just outside their window.

“Bridge to the engineering crew, we needed those upgrades ten minutes ago, _Defiant_ is approaching.”

“My apologies,” Dreamer’s voice came back resolute. “It’ll still be two days of work. We’ll have no warp until then…”

“Would it help if I joined you?”

“How good are you at sonic welding?” Scarlett’s terse reply came. “We’re physically changing the core shape for the new core.”

_Damn._

“I’ll send Angel as soon as the torpedo bay is at full capacity. Keep at it. We weren’t ever going to get out of this using speed alone, not with one nacelle.”

They would likely have to fight without the upgrades, and now without any warp. Dreamer and Scarlett were down in engineering doing the last of the upgrades themselves. Thistle was working on the shields and deflectors and would rejoin them as soon as possible. Ultraviolet knew his mind was somewhere else and hoped that being alone, rather than in the distracting presence of others, wouldn’t cause his mind to wander back to what was happening in sick bay. Angel was in the torpedo bay replicating torpedoes at high speed. They would be fully armed for this battle, but once _Defiant_ detected them the rest of the fleet would move in to pinch them. He needed that extra boost from their engines.

_Just that ability to switch directions without any delay...just that extra boost._

Somewhere in the medical bay, life was making its own case known. Childbirth was speedy for genetically engineered humans. It was now hour six since Clover had gone into labor, and he was starting to worry for her child. A new genetically engineered human was coming into this world, a new crewman to join their seven, that half a life sign, that tiny form, so perfectly created, so delicately designed. Knowing this was giving him the courage he needed, giving him the edge of desire to win this battle so that a tiny life could see the rest of the universe, and travel those stars that he himself had loved. He hoped Thistle was being spurred on by the arrival of his child, rather than held back by it. Men could react in strange ways to the coming of their own child. At his age he had fathered a few, despite never marrying, he knew what that moment was like, that moment of watching a new being you had been responsible for the existence of emerging from the womb. In his daughter’s case, an artificial womb.

If he got out of this alive he was going to have cross words with her mother about sending her to Aedigeon alone.

“Jeeves, start shutting down life support on unnecessary decks, make sure there’s a direct tunnel between us and engineering, move auxiliary power to the transporters and replicators and be prepared to transport the crew here as soon as they are ready.”

“Aye sir…”

He checked in with Angel as well, the situation was still as it was, almost at full torpedo complement. Thistle was done with the deflector control and shields and was making his way to Engineering.

The _Defiant_ ’s predatory movement towards them was causing the hairs to rise on his knuckles and he gripped the arms of his chair hard. Soon _Defiant_ would be in visual distance of the biridion cloud, and it would be child’s play to locate them.

He wasn’t afraid. Not for himself. He was afraid for the future. For the Factions who depended on him to find their leader and present the Firebird to them to prevent a war. And who knew if their new leader would be willing? He was afraid for the Federation, fighting a futile battle against them when they should be fighting the Dominion. For Colony 53, his daughter and her new friends, and those augment children fighting against the very real prejudices that were working against them. For the people of Earth, who had to deal with the Children of Khan and their biological warfare.

And for the life coming into existence on this very ship as he sat there, feeling helpless to do anything but wait to be found. Suddenly the beeping sound of the long range sensors started going off like mad at the small monitor by his hand.

“Captain I’m detecting two new ships moving into the area…Scanning for identification.”

Ultraviolet tensed, teeth clenched, and he gripped the chair arms so hard he could feel the stitches coming loose. A battle against three was maybe a long shot. But five?

“Sir...the ships are Dominion.”

_We’re dead..._

Unless...

_The enemy of my enemy is my friend...for today._

“Maintain course...and let's see whether they attack the _Defiant_ or stand down. If they stand down they’re a scout and more are on the way. We may need the fleet’s help before long.”

_Or they’ll need ours. It could be our salvation. Or we all end up in the Defiant’s brig. Either way, this battle isn’t over until the warp core blows._

* * *

“Hey, who invited them?” said Cadet Nog, sounding offended that the Dominion had even dared.

Sisko liked that about the Cadet. He was free with his thoughts, but not in a way that altered the chain of command. Much like the Chief.

“Hail them…”

“Hailing frequencies open.”

“Dominion vessel, this is Captain Benjamin Sisko,” he said. “Asking you to explain your purpose travelling through Bajoran space…”

The Badlands were considered Bajoran by the Federation and Bajor. Cardassia had always contested it. 

The viewscreen came on and the Vorta of the Dominion ship was fortunately not Weyoun. He seemed rather aloof, distant, his face almost blank of expression.

“I am Yelgrun, and the Dominion doesn’t recognize Bajor’s claim to this region of space. However, my mission here is merely scientific, Captain, not military, so I hope we can cooperate in a way that is mutually beneficial to both our peoples.”

Sisko would believe that the day that Cardassia mass converted to the Bajoran faith. If they weren’t attacking they were scouts, a prelude to a bigger force. Yelgrun would be assessing their numbers to see how many ships would be needed for an assault. But Yelgrun didn’t know that the _Titan_ and the _Archimedes_ were soon to arrive and expand their party of three to five. He would not, however, mention it to the Vorta. The less Dominion ships that showed up to the party the better.

“We’re searching for a missing ship,” said Sisko. “Perhaps we could cooperate?”

Yelgrun’s blank mask of a face smiled lightly.

“Perhaps…”

Hopefully the Dominion could help them do what they had been trying and failing to do for nearly two days...

_Find the damned Enterprise…_

“Sir...I think we’ve got it…the biridion cloud we're approaching is showing traces of decaying tachyons...”

_Or perhaps not…_

“Well Captain...it looks like you’ve found your missing ship,” said Yelgrun. “Please, by all means, don’t let us get in your way of retrieving it.”

_Not necessarily a bad situation...this will give Dax time to try and contact the Commander...it would be a shame if we had to destroy a Federation starship right on the edge of a battle with the Dominion._

* * *

Dax bent down over the terminal for a moment and considered. The unit was functioning, she was accessing the command structure of the Borg hive and she was putting out her personalized Queen signature into subspace, looking for Data. She was using his name and her own name specifically in the call request to prevent any mix ups with any real Borg cube that might be drifting by. She hoped there weren't any other Borg out here the Badlands, that would really complicate their situation more than it already was.

If Data called back and was a drone she would shut him down and hopefully be able reset him. If he was a Queen then she could try to reason with him. But if he didn’t make contact at all…

The subspace field seemed blissfully unpopulated by any Borg lifesigns. And then…

… _ceiving your signal…_

Success! He was communicating! To her complete disappointment, he was in fact, showing as a fellow Queen according to her terminal. But still, it was contact.

_...ubspace Interf...ce..._

“Right...the biridion cloud,” she tapped her combadge. “Captain I’m detecting Data’s Borg communications system but he can barely make contact, there’s too much interference.”

“Could this be a sign that he’s willing to talk?”

“Maybe...we need to clean up the signal...can we get closer to the biridion cloud?”

“Without alerting the _Enterprise_ to the fact that we have found them?”

“Well, Commander Data knows we found them,” said Dax. “He’s a Queen so I can’t shut him down. But maybe we could reason with them through Data?”

The pause caused Dax some concern. Sisko was thinking.

“We have a potential Dominion force on the way, and I think the _Enterprise_ would be a good unit to send up against them…if the Dominion gets here before our support does. We'll move closer.”

Dax was startled for a moment, and she looked at Chief O’Brien, whose eyebrows rose to his hairline. Dax thought about that, and typed in a reply to Data.

_Please stand by…_

“If the Dominion is unable to detect Borg transmissions then we have a way to coordinate with the other ship while silent running,” Dax considered.

“But we would have to give the Faction something they want,” she heard Worf’s voice from the bridge, he was loud enough that he was coming over Sisko’s communicator.

“They want the _Enterprise_ , and they have it,” Sisko said. “But they are pinned in. Just surviving the battle may be enough…”

“Maybe…”

Dax thought about it for a moment. Data had yet to reply.

“If you can get through the static, send Data everything we’ve just discussed. Lets see what the _Enterprise_ crew think of the offer.”

Dax put in a brief summary of the situation, and hoped that they were now close enough.

_...More Dominion arriving...Fleet ships needed...Temporary truce?_

That was simple enough.

_Please standby._

Dax sat back on her heels and waited. It was all up to Data now.

* * *

“How long were you going to keep this from us?” Thistle demanded hotly.

“I just found out myself,” said Dreamer. “And I would like to remind you that Borg technology is very dangerous for the _Defiant_ to have replicated and installed on their ship. They risk assimilating their ship and crew if the nanoprobes get into the replication systems…”

“That is neither here nor there, you kept something from us…”

“Thistle…” Ultraviolet looked cross, and he crossed the Engineering bay pointedly. “We have a fleet of who knows how many Dominion ships on the way, and we need two days to upgrade the ship. We have no recourse. I would rather not have any more human life lost, do you?”

Thistle stood back and took an exasperated breath. Clover was still in labor. Hour seven. It wasn’t a good sign. Ordinary humans gave birth in eight or more hours. Genetically engineered women in under five.

_She should have popped by now._

He hated thinking about her like that. His anger of Dreamer receiving a transmission from the _Defiant_ science officer was like a hot lead in his stomach. He had not bothered opening the Android’s head or asking if he could and he already knew there were Borg components in his head. It was more frustration with himself, for not thinking they would try to make contact. But he was so angry that he was close to ripping that head off and cutting their losses. He knew he didn’t have the physical strength to go up against Dreamer anyways.

“We should also consider,” Dreamer continued. “Once the Dominion destroys the Federation fleet, they may destroy or capture us to try and get their hands on the new system upgrade. So far as we know, Rebirth hasn’t given that information to them.”

“If they don’t steal it from the Federation themselves,” said Scarlett. “They have shapeshifters everywhere.”

“Paranoia,” said Ultraviolet. “And they would still get the information regardless. Do we want ourselves to be the reason?”

All their heads shook in response.

“Is there a way to speed up the upgrades?” Ultraviolet asked, for the umpteenth time, and Thistle was almost ready to shake him.

“The biggest problem is the size of the core itself, everything else can be put into place,” said Dreamer, preventing him from losing his cool. “The bulk of the time being consumed is involved in the welding of the core tube. If we had a temporary solution for keeping the core seated…”

“Any filler we used would potentially cause the core to vibrate at dangerous levels…” said Thistle. “Tractor beams could short out.”

“If we used a filling material, and kept the Engine core at zero G, the core would retain enough stability to give us a momentary warp thrust…” Dreamer said, and he was putting calculations into his PADD, which he helpfully passed to Thistle first, thank you sir. “We could implement our plan to eject the old warp core.”

“But we would be throwing it at the Dominion…” Scarlett said, sounding rather excited.

“We’d just need to coordinate with the Fleet so they knew when to dodge…without the Dominion knowing what we were doing.”

“Hence…” Ultraviolet smiled. “Dreamer’s wonderful undetectable link to the Borg hive mind.”

Thistle felt the bitter irony of it and must have visibly made some sort of expression for Scarlett grinned broadly at him.

_Jumped up little…_

Dreamer’s mouth quirked up in an android version of a smile as well. Ultraviolet was already marching his way out of engineering.

“I know I’m going to regret this…”

* * *

“Brilliant,” said O’Brien, looking down at the Borg transmitter as if Christmas had come early. “I knew Data wouldn’t let us down.”

“Maybe,” said Dax. “A warp core explosion would do serious damage here in the Badlands, we need to calculate for the possibility of a warp rift forming…”

“A warp rift would keep the Dominion from being able to sneak into Bajoran space this way,” said O'Brien. “I think in the short term it would be fine. This place has been used as a hiding space for Cardassians, Maquis and others for decades.”

“The resistance too…” said Dax, and she started putting her calculations into her side terminal. “I think the instability of the Badlands might actually prevent the formation of the rift, the energy might be deflected rather than concentrated, we just have luck to decide.”

“Fifty fifty, just about,” said O’Brien looking down at her monitor. “What is the Dominion doing?”

“Right now probably wondering why we haven’t destroyed the ship, or taken it into custody…”

“Maybe they’re expecting us to bring in more troops too.”

“We should time this for when the whole Dominion fleet has arrived…”

Dax thought it over, and input a message to Data. The reply was a concern.

_One hour._

She tapped her badge.

“Dax to bridge. One hour until they are ready to throw the old core,” Dax said.

“We don’t have one hour,” said Sisko. “The Dominion fleet is here.”

“Then we’d better keep them off the _Enterpise_ until they are ready to use their secret weapon.”

“You can count on it, Old Man.”

Dax felt the comment warm inside of her, its familiarity a blanket that she could wrap around herself. She knew she would stick by him like glue, whoever the symbiont inside her was joined with in future. Trill hosts didn't live as long as human, but the symbionts could live for a thousand years. It may have just been Curzon’s influence, or it may have been all the times her hosts had died of forces outside of their control, but she had always felt strangely that Bejamin Sisko was more likely to outlive her than the other way around. 

She just hoped they all survived this coming battle. 

* * *

Captain Edward Jellico felt the deck of the _Cairo_ shaking underneath him. He cried out battle orders, his interim first officer looking completely out of his league. He should have promoted Dolenz when he had the chance. But the man had so many strikes on his record that Starfleet was balking. If they survived this, he wouldn’t hesitate to give him that damned pip.

“Aim for their shield generators!”

All his battle history was coming to the center of his being as the Dominion ships, small and more maneuverable, were taking pot shots at them, veering dangerously close to their hull. All statistics showed that when the battle was doing ill the Dominion opted for suicide runs and _Cairo_ was an easy target. _Farragut_ was showing all the signs of their experience with fighting the Dominion and Jellico was jealous. He had been on embassy runs for too long.

“Carl, tactical advice,” he talked directly to his second officer. “Advance or focus on defense?”

Jellico had a very particular set up on his bridge. His first officer where he should be. His second officer, Chief of security, was at tactical, and everywhere everyone else was exactly where they should be. No need for officers to leave their posts to go to other terminals, every station was manned.

“Defense,” said Carl immediately. “We don’t know when our support will get here, but _Defiant_ needs us to give them time…”

“Why do you say that?”

“I noticed that _Defiant_ has been doing everything to protect the _Enterprise_ out in that biridion cloud, rather than leave it for the Dominion. _Enterprise_ is going to fight for us.”

“You sure?”

“Can’t imagine why _Defiant_ would take so many pot shots otherwise?”

“Stick to defense then...but still keep firing...we need to reduce their numbers…”

“Aye sire!”

“We’re detecting new ships, Cardassian sir.”

“Damned, more support. How long have they been planning this invasion of Bajor?”

They were going to find out.

* * *

_...Sisko says ‘feel free to make your pitch any time…’ We’ll hold them as long as we can..._

Dreamer was both working on the engines, and keeping contact with Dax, who was now using verbal communication rather than typing into a screen, which indicated her battle focused status. His own mind was a chaos of mixed emotions as their hull shook. _Defiant_ couldn’t keep the Dominion off their tail completely, and they had to just stay in one place and take what shots got through as the engineering team worked.

_We’re working together...for now…but what happens after the 'ball is thrown', so to speak?_

It was only minutes ago that they had shunted the new core into the makeshift core tube, and he felt his uncertainty and calculated certainty at war with one another. All the calculations showed it would be effective but that fraction of possible failure was bringing up very strange thoughts in his head. Mostly he was imagining the fiery destruction of their ship. But there was a more alarming feeling.

Aggression. Adrenaline. He wanted to fight. He felt a thrill of what could be called blood lust filling him when Dax sent him the message to go ‘make their pitch’. _Defiant_ was now making its last stand, and had sent the rest of the fleet to pushing the Dominion into the area to maximize the core's impact. _Titan_ and _Archimedes_ had finally arrived. It was now or never. He tapped his combadge to contact the bridge.

“As soon as we’re ready, we can throw the old core,” said Dreamer, re-checking all his calculations. “The new core is stable…”

“I suggest sooner than later,” said Ultraviolet in response. “We have a window to escape both the Dominion and Starfleet now…”

Dreamer took a deep breath and activated the infill material, watching it expand around the core and solidify. Thistle was making fast calculations into his monitor, anchored to his station with a line, and looking not the least bit ruffled by being in zero G.

“Here’s the problem now,” said Thistle, taking a deep breath. “The core will have to be automatically set to detonate soon after we drop it, but if the biridion destabilizes it before then…”

“It is the only element we cannot predict…”

“We could freeze it first, to slow down its destabilization process…” said Scarlett, and Thistle took a moment to look at her in complete awe.

“Brilliant!” said Thistle. “Chaos theory! I love it!”

Dreamer and Scarlett both looked at him confused.

“Thistle to bridge, we're now preparing to launch the warp core. Get ready to run.”

Dreamer sent the signal to Dax as well, and made his way to the core bay. Thistle’s motion briefly stopped when an unfamiliar voice came over the communications system.

“ _Enterprise_ holographic Doctor to _Enterprise_ crew. I am proud to announce the birth of Miss Amelia Leah Brahms at fourteen hundred hours and eleven minutes.”

Thistle’s eyes widened, and Dreamer grabbed his elbow. 

“We cannot waver now.”

“I know," he said, swallowing and following along beside him. "But she is the reason, Dreamer,” a look of awe and increased determination filled his eyes. “Not just the Firebird or the Factions or the Federation…” Thistle's tears floated away from him and he rubbed his face and smiled. “The future.”

_A peaceful future for their people. This is what I have been helping to ensure. I hope we succeed, or Amelie Brahms will never see her first birthday._

* * *

Dax felt her feet staggering as she approached the bridge. Intership communications were down. Their shields were clearly failing, and so were the inertial dampeners if the deck plates were buckling this badly. She needed to let them know. The ball was about to be tossed. She had to warn them.

The next eruption beneath the deck plating was under her feet, taking out the hallway and throwing her and the other crewmen widely into the walls, shrapnel flying around the air.

The impact was in her spine and she felt blood bubble up into her throat and she coughed. It was too late to warn them. It was too late.

_Benjamin…_

“Emergency on deck two, emergency transport to sick bay!”

She felt a fuzzy feeling of understanding when she realized she wasn’t the one the ensign was transporting. She wasn’t being rescued. Her vision was going dim...

It was already too late. The symbiont was pulling her into itself, she should feel it, her consciousness merging into its own, and suddenly she was feeling herself there, surrounded by the familiar faces of all the previous hosts, all of them welcoming her, calling out to her with open arms

_Soon, Ben...I’ll come back soon…_

* * *

The emptiness of space was a riot of Dominion ships, and Captain Riker watched from the _Titan_ as the _Defiant_ , a battered but tough little ship, evacuated the area around the _Enterprise_ at impulse. The Dominion was now closing in on the prone ship. It would need a tow.

“She got through a lot, aim photon torpedoes at the Dominion ships and get a tractor beam on the _Defiant_ , let's close that gap in their line…”

Riker knew the only reason the _Defiant_ had protected the _Enterprise_ for so long had to have been the connection with Data...must how been. Now everyone else in the fleet was wondering what _Enterprise_ was going to do...before _Defiant_ got closer and hailed them, risking having their transmissions overheard by the Dominion.

“ _Defiant_ to _Titan_...pull back...too close…”

The transmission was very bad. Their communications system was damaged.

“Too close to what?”

“...the core…”

“Sir, the _Enterprise_ just ejected a loose core from one of its warp core bays...the core is drifting…”

Riker hadn’t expected that. And watched as the _Enterprise_ started moving away from the biridion cloud, aiming for the gap between the Dominion fleet and their own, and gunning it, at warp one.

Not much warp to gun, but Riker put two and two together.

“Tell _Defiant_ to shut down all engines, we're going to warp. Open a channel to the fleet.”

“Channel open sir…”

“This is Captain Riker of the _Titan_. Retreat, at high warp, as fast as you can, that thing is gonna blow!”

The core exploded just as _Defiant_ was stabilized enough for them to go to warp, the biridion cloud ignited, and boiled with fire, before exploding in a fiery blast that began to expand. A chain reaction had formed. The fireball caught the nearest Dominion ship, which likewise exploded, and ship after ship in a chain reaction was being eaten up and feeding the expanding sphere of red fire. At warp five they were just out of range as the Dominion fleet was consumed completely.

_Data…_

His prayers and thoughts were now for Data, the _Enterprise_ crew, and faint hope that their unexpected friends in this fight had managed to get out of the battlefield alive.

* * *

Sisko found himself adrift as he stumbled into the sick bay, and found Doctor Hei, who looked as miserable as he himself felt.

“She’s already gone,” he said, indicating the lifeless form of Jadzia Dax. “I stabilized the Dax symbiont to a stasis unit, but it won’t survive transport to Trill.”

“Contact the _Titan_ and see if they have any Trill crew on board, she’s the ship towing us.”

Worf had followed him from the bridge, and was now standing over Jadzia by her side, looking down on her face. Sisko waited. He knew what was coming, and the howl of warning to the warriors of Sto-Vo-Kor, that a warrior was coming, filled him with the finality of her death, and the terrible agony of loss was brought home completely.

Sisko felt the pain and despair taking over him as Worf took one last look, then turned, leaving the ‘shell’ of Jadzia behind.

But now Sisko had to concern himself with the symbiont. The lifetimes of experiences could not be lost here. But all he could focus on was the young woman who had been his crewman and his friend for over six years, and a lifetime longer.

Agony took over his world, and a pain that he hadn’t experienced since his wife had died, and he knelt down on the floor and just wept.

* * *

_Life...look at her...look at her…_

Thistle felt his chest was not big enough for his heartbeat as he looked down into the infant bed, his face wet with tears, his chest tight with worry. The tiny infant support respirator was doing things to his sanity that he didn’t like. He wanted to rip it out of her but knew it was a horrible thought, he wouldn't be freeing her from her problems by doing so. Her immune system was compromised in some way, and she needed the respirator to keep infections from reaching her tiny lungs...

Of course she had been perfect in his mind the moment he had seen her, regardless, but he knew he had questions. A lot of questions. They hadn’t engineered her, wanting to pass on their own genes, and see what resulted from it. It was certainly safe to do so in pre-designed Augment societies where all the Augments were made the same way. But he and his wife _weren’t_. Both of them had the ability to pass down their advanced DNA, but had different procedures, so what went wrong? What was the problem between them, the difference that had resulted in this?

Or was it chaos theory again? The holographic Doctor had given them a few ideas, then had been asked to access the Starfleet medical library to research them. Which would mean remote communication with Starfleet which they couldn’t allow. It would need to wait for a second opinion from a Neutrality doctor.

_At least we’re heading for friendly space. At impulse, cloaked, and vulnerable to any attack…_

All the crew but Jeeves were now working on the core, and the upgrades to the systems. A tiny warp one jump was fine, they had made it out, but the upgraded warp systems in the ship would allow them to do so much more.

_And I already have ideas for further upgrades. Scarlett gave me that idea, an autofreeze system to freeze the core in the event of a breech, that should have already been standard, really..._

Amelie moved a little in her sleep and Thistle bent down to kiss her on her soft fuzzy honey blonde head, dismayed when one of his tears fell down onto her curly crown.

_She looks like her mum. She really does._

Another person had entered the sick bay, and he felt the other person was someone he hadn’t really wanted sharing this moment.

“Do androids know what parenthood is like?” Thistle said, almost feeling like he didn’t want to say anything to the invader. “Do they know what it's like to have a child and feel fear when they are ill, fear like this?”

“Oh yes,” Dreamer moved quietly over and looked down into the cradle quietly. “Yes…”

Thistle looked up at him, skeptical, but the android didn’t let him reply.

“Let me tell you the story about my android daughter, Lal.”

And he had a feeling, as Dreamer related the story of his android’s creation, that the world wasn’t so black and white as he had thought it was.

* * *

Julian Subatoi Bashir stumbled his way to the infirmary, feeling his chest aching in a painful way, prepared for the worse. Another sudden wake up call from Kai Opaka, warning him to be strong, and he was now stumbling towards the sick bay, confused.

His combadge chirped.

“Jabara to Bashir, we have a problem in sick bay?”

“What kind of problem?” he asked, as his feet left the turbolift and bounded down the promenade. 

“One I don’t think I can explain well over communicators. You have to see it for yourself.”

Nurse Jabara was utterly right. When he arrived in the infirmary, he was expecting to find someone there, but the problem wasn’t someone he had been expecting to find.

“Doctor Bashir…” said Doctor Bashir impatiently. “I’ve been waiting for you for twenty minutes, you really need to work on your response time.”

He had a moment to start, and realized he was looking at his own hologram. The Longterm Medical Hologram, or LMH, that Zimmerman had been working on that had caused all his troubles.

“My response time?” Julian would have felt offended, but the hologram probably didn’t know about the three straight red eyed shifts he had pulled in the last three days.

“Never mind. I’m sure someone more advanced can explain it to you,” the hologram insulted him pointedly, in a way that reminded him of his creator, Lewis Zimmerman. “I have a message for you.”

“A message?”

Several nurses arrived and the hologram seemed to realize he had an audience now for he cleared his throat.

“Ahem. I am pleased to announce the birth of Amelia Leah Brahms on board the starship _Enterprise_ , and,” he smiled, eyes narrowing in an almost gleeful look of revenge. “I have for you a full record of the ship’s personnel.”

A replicator nearby hummed and an infirmary transporter activated and the PADD the holodoctor had replicated appeared on the workstation nearest Bashir. He picked it up and looked at it, and all his neurons were firing at once.

It was a complete personnel list all right. Living...and dead. Causes of death, current health, the status of ship pets...

“Bashir to ops,” he said, feeling the astonishment in his voice coming in loud and clear. “I have a problem…”

“What kind of problem…?” asked Kira.

He realized and almost smiled, turning to look at Jabara, who was also smiling.

“A problem I can’t share over communicators.”

“I’m on my way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I knew that Ezri was going to get the Dax symbiont when I decided to bring her in, that was a given, I just didn't know how, and I was agonizing over the idea of killing off yet another beloved main character. I'm three for three now. But I wanted to somehow convey the catastrophic losses of war and you can't really do that by killing off Stan the NPC. 
> 
> And thus the Dominion shows its face. Expect more Dominion.
> 
> Fun fact, Yelgrun is a Vorta from the show, some might remember that he was the Vorta from the episode with the Ferengi squad trying to rescue Quark's mother Ishka. Fun times all around. :D


	11. Gathering Sorrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life is a bit blah for me right now and I've had trouble being inspired to write. Maybe I can get my mojo back soon.

_Jadzia…_

Julian Bashir looked around the wardroom feeling a leaden weight in his chest threatening to cut off his breathing. Captain Sisko sat looking like a broken man, eyes glassy. Julian momentarily felt almost as if two sets of eyes were looking through himself at Sisko, him and Kai Opaka, or maybe it was the Prophets? But somehow he knew, almost without knowing how, that Sisko was going to leave. He was going to leave, and Julian couldn’t go with him. He desperately wanted to.

_‘The Emissary has his own path in the stars…’_

Definitely Opaka. Major Kira was sitting next to Odo, and giving Captain Riker a look of pure sadness. Riker’s face was now in his hands, and next to him Captain Picard was looking over the PADD for the eighteenth time and shaking his head, no longer hiding his tears. If Captain Picard, known to be reserved, and a private man, was crying, there could be no doubt what that meant.

“Oh Geordi, Geordi…”

Worf, thank god for Worf, was looking stalwart and unphased. He had mourned personally and privately for Jadzia, and would do so for his _Enterprise_ friends who had died, once this meeting was over with. O’Brien sat next to him looking severely grieved, with an edge of exhaustion. The PADD was now being passed around so that everyone could see the list of the dead for themselves. But Captain Picard had already spoken the name that the _Enterprise_ command staff were the most concerned for and soon there were few dry eyes left. It was a strange moment of shared grief. Kira had just passed along the PADD without looking at it, she would examine it later he knew. Her eyes closed and she put her hands out. She was now praying in silence.

Julian resolved that he would be drinking with O’Brien and Worf later in Quark’s bar, in memory of Geordi LaForge and all who had died on the _Enterprise._ He remembered the vibrant positive Chief Engineer who had been excited to see what the Gamma quadrant device could do. He remembered the man on Rubicun who had not stopped working on studying the alien space station and fighting for the Edo, even as the virus there had crippled and blinded him. He remembered the man on Parliament, taking a stand for his friends by dumping his unpleasant girlfriend...Teasing Julian at his own brief wedding.

But Jadzia...for her he would cry his eyes out in private later. Bawl like a goddamned baby and crab Kukalaka and curl up in a ball on the bed. Just a weeping miserable ball.

Looking severely out of place in this mix of people, and sitting between Riker and Troi, was Ezri...Ezri Dax. The new host who had gotten the symbiont. She hadn’t had time to adjust yet, and was looking spooked and uncertain, and probably feeling severely out of place about everything as the only former _Destiny_ crewman present. Not to mention all those new memories she was adjusting to.

_Most Trill hosts get years of training, all she got was a lecture from the Titan’s doctor and a replicated pamphlet from Trill. I’m not going to badger her about Jadzia though, she’s Ezri, a completely new person with her own identity. We can’t treat her like a plastered fix in for Jadzia._

Julian turned his head and took a deep breath as he suppressed his own pain. A few heads looked up at him at his sudden indrawn breath. Crusher mostly, she was looking red eyed and angry. Troi, next to her, just looked like a ghost. Like a horrified ghost. The PADD had made its way around now, and everyone was just silent. Unmoving and tear stained. Everyone had lost someone.

 _So much death all in one week, less than that. How long has it been since the Enterprise theft? Seventy two hours. Jesus Christ_.

Well, nearly everyone had lost someone. The only other odd man out was Commander S’Vek, whose ship, _Sentinel_ , had just arrived with more of the fleet, all of them here to shore up Bajor’s defences against another potential invasion. Cardassia still had a large force on the other side of the Badlands ready to move in, once the unstable environment was safe to traverse. Cardassia would be feverishly working on ways to stabilize it, if not the Dominion. There was no sign of a warp rift yet, but preventing one right now seemed a lost cause to him.

S’Vek’s face was a mask, as neutral as it could be in this sea of sorrow as he handed the PADD back to Picard. Picard just put down the PADD, and leaned back in his chair.

“Don’t cry because life is over, smile because it happened,” he paraphrased thoughtfully.

“Dr. Suess?” said Julian, and a few heads looked up.

“One of the greatest writers in our history,” Picard smiled at him, both of them sharing the maudlin joy of the innocence of childhood for that moment. Suess was universal.

“We’ll need to use this information we’ve gotten carefully,” said Sisko quietly, and rather distantly, pointing a finger at the PADD.

“We first have to figure out how the medical hologram on board the _Enterprise_ was able to contact the one on the station,” said O’Brien, looking perplexed.

“I can help with that question,” said S’Vek, needing no prompting. “As many of you already know, I was on the Starfleet Intelligence task force involved with studying the potential security risks of implementing Doctor Lewis Zimmerman’s emergency medical hologram program and the long term hologram project he wanted to implement. And I found some severe security flaws in its design.”

Odo sat up fully and every eye was on the Vulcan, who seemed to be living, breathing and existing in this universe for just this moment of revelation. No Vulcan had ever looked more triumphant and smug in his certainty of his evaluation of a subject.

“Each hologram was designed to be able to automatically connect to Starfleet medical to access necessary information in a medical emergency. As a supplement, in order to ensure the holograms were able to access all up to date medical information available, Zimmerman designed them to communicate with each other. Ship to ship. The hologram on _Enterprise_ only needed one open channel to communicate with the hologram on another ship and relay information and request information..”

“A back door,” said Odo. “And a significant security risk.”

“I am certain those on board the _Enterprise_ would have encrypted all communications access to bar any Starfleet channels from receiving a communique,” said S’Vek. “So the message would have travelled until it reached a holographic doctor that could receive the message without the block. A hologram not owned by Starfleet.”

“My hologram, which belongs to a Bajoran officer,” Julian said, and he saw Kira smile at him.

“Correct, Doctor,” said S’Vek. “And can you guess now why Zimmerman’s work was so dangerous that we shut down his Long-term project?”

“I can certainly see it. All you would need is one of those holograms in the wrong hands, and sensitive Starfleet medical information travelling between ships could end up in enemy hands.” Julian smiled.

“Precisely,” said S’Vek. “Zimmerman was adamant that his program couldn’t function adequately otherwise, he was quite stern about refusing to change it, and everything was stalled because he refused to give up command control of his program to Starfleet Medical. His long-term program was halted, due to the fact that his old programs were already implemented and vulnerable. Thus I was sent to investigate,” he paused, and fortunately his expression returned to its previous neutral state. “It should be noted, now that he is missing, that he had a command access override for all the holograms on all the ships. We can physically remove the units or simply keep them turned off, but to destroy or reprogram them we need his codes. So far we haven’t had much success.”

“The revenge of Lewis Zimmerman,” said Julian, and S’Vek actually gave him the Vulcan equivalent of a not-smile of approval. “He probably meant for the holograms to always be able to communicate with _him_ in an emergency, more than Starfleet…”

“Starfleet’s extreme interest in finding out what happened to him was due to outstanding charges of espionage against _him_ ,” said S’Vek. “I apologize for having to keep this information secret until now.”

“Most certainly,” said Picard. “Clearly there’s now a loophole in the program that lets the _Enterprise_ medical officer communicate with us when we’re in range with it. Can we use this to our advantage?”

“I believe so,” S’Vek suddenly realized, giving Julian an almost calculating look. “If Doctor Bashir is willing, we can have him send messages to the hologram that we want to be sent.”

“The _Enterprise_ thieves may not have discovered this loophole yet, but we need to be careful how we proceed,” said Odo, and he reached his hand out in a silent request for the PADD. Picard handed it to him readily. “First, we need more information about the people on board. The hologram only sent us medical information, no ship sensor logs. Times of death and location of death will both be critical to our investigation as to the events that took place on board. I’ll need to start interviewing all the _Enterprise_ crew.”

“I’ve turned the investigation over to Constable Odo,” said Captain Riker to them all. “I decided a third party would be better, since almost all of us are in some way involved as witnesses. I hope nobody minds. He came, highly recommended,” he smiled over at Major Kira, who returned.

Smiles. People were in fact smiling. Troi still looked rather pale, and Crusher took a deep breath.

“I’ll begin the forensic investigation. Not just the deaths, but the health of the people who are alive. We know there was a baby born on board, with a medical problem. I’m worried for the child’s health. And the mother.”

A lot of conversation followed about the thieves, as everyone tried to work out in their minds what had happened. Julian noted that the one person they had already known was still on board was not mentioned once.

Data. They were excluding Data from their conversation, and nobody in the DS9 crew was bringing up the subject of their communications with the _Enterprise_ during the battlefield. That conversation would wait for Admiral Ross to arrive.

Crusher was now looking over the PADD, and Bashir silently asked for it with his own hand out. She passed it to him, and he went over the list again, taking a deep breath. Data was listed as healthy and uninjured. But undamaged? Unaltered from his programming?

_How did they manage to subvert his security overrides? Did they subvert his security overrides? Think Julian…Calculate the odds._

Julian had been practicing his skills of calculating probability. He often worked on puzzles on a PADD during his breaks in his duties and found them to be quite a distraction. Genetic engineering wasn’t instant knowledge, he still had to learn the skills he wanted to excel in. His enhancement in particular allowed him to form the neural pathways only for those specific advanced skills that he made use of. So for him, advanced skills developed as he practiced them, rather than all at once. He also had an advantage over other Augments of being able to reverse the formation of those pathways if he wanted to. He could even induce himself into a coma if he wasn’t careful.

_Calculating the spread of a virus, the outcome of a patient...those are my existing skills. Medical statistics. I have the skillset for probability, just not in the right field..._

And his medical mind just couldn’t see any variable where Data wasn’t fully in control of his own programming. But he knew Data, personally. He couldn’t see what motive he could possibly have for being a part of it if he wasn’t being controlled somehow by forces outside of himself. Perhaps he was infiltrating?

Bashir shook his head. He didn’t have all the mission logs and information available, and he would need that to understand the entire situation and calculate correctly all variables. But the Borg communication strategy during the battle confirmed his mind, somehow Data was in control of his own body and mind and was on the _Enterprise_ willingly. His Borg programming implants would have fought any attempts to take control with an external program. But then again, the Faction was made up of genetically engineered humans who might have found a way around the Borg security to give them access. Would the Faction have even wanted a partial Borg on board? Had they been the ones to deactivate the link between Commander Data and Captain Picard? It was just a huge set of convoluted variables with only half the information.

_Who am I kidding? I need to study probability more, I have no idea what the answer is. Songbird would know. He would absolutely know. Maybe I should ask him?_

“It might be wise to put the entire investigation in third party hands,” Odo was saying now, looking up at Julian, as if guessing where his mind had been going. “Including forensics.”

“I’m not allowed to practice medicine in Federation space,” said Julian, to the astonishment of a lot of people who hadn’t known that yet. “I’m sure any investigation I was a part of would be thrown out. But here,” he handed the PADD back to Crusher.

“It’s not right,” said Crusher, fiercely. “Your research isn’t immoral. It isn’t technically illegal either, Rot _can_ sometimes be fatal. It just isn’t possible to predict when it will become fatal in a patient.”

“I’ll speak to Ross,” said Picard, surprising Julian. “We can’t afford to not have skilled Doctors here on the frontlines over semantics and debates over Starfleet policy. Not when you just saved so many Federation lives.”

Of course Picard would see things that way. Julian looked away, feeling that he was blushing from the attention.

“If you can get permission for Bashir to work on the forensics I can start to work out a blueprint of cause and effect of injuries in relation to the security reports and sensor logs we do have,” Odo stated. 

“I haven’t even started my Selvelvian research yet so I really don’t know what the problem is, genetic engineering may not even be effective,” Julian took a deeply pained breath. “And if Bajor and the Federation _both_ agree to block it, then it will _never_ get started…”

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” said Crusher. “You see, this is a thing that our test could account for...third party research. Right now only Federation medicine is accepted as official. And medical research is all governed by Starfleet law, regardless of its proven effectiveness outside of Federation space.”

“Which is ridiculous,” said Julian, and he knew he had an audience. “We’ve gotten so much information about Cardassian and Bajoran medicine here that can’t be incorporated into Starfleet medical until Bajor joins the Federation. Right now it's seen as cultural information, rather than medical. Someone with a Starfleet medical commission has to do all the research themselves over again before Starfleet Medical will accept it.”

Kira looked highly alarmed with that.

“This isn’t about Bajor’s herbal traditions is it?”

“Yes, but not all of it, Cardassian medicine is treated the same way. Klingons are allies so we treat the information they give us differently.”

“If I recall correctly,” said S’Vek. “We treat medical information from treaty allies as shared medical intelligence.” 

Kira’s face made an expression that caused a few people to grin. It was a cross between confusion and hilarity.

“Believe me I know,” said Crusher to her with a smile of her own. “It's confusing and strange at times, and it leaves no room to breath,” she looked over the PADD.

“I think we should get back to the subject of the investigation,” said Sisko, softly imputing his own voice.

“If anyone has any other ideas of how we should proceed, I would be happy to hear them,” said Odo.

“How about using the holosuite to set up the blueprint of the crime scene so that we can all put our witness testimony?” ventured Troi. “We found this method very effective in the past.”

She was looking calmer now, and less pale. Julian was relieved. Mission related conversation was clearly acting well as a temporary bandage for their sorrow.

“I like that idea,” said Odo. “We can all then coordinate our efforts in the same location, my own investigation, witness testimony and forensics on the same three dimensional blueprint.”

“Like the old crime scene investigations from mystery novels,” said Julian. “Where they would use all their pictures and evidence and arrange them on a board to link everything together.”

Picard clearly very much liked this idea, giving him a knowing smile. Julian knew Picard was just as fond of detective stories as he was. If he ever got the courage, he would invite him to try the spy program Felix had made for him.

“Quark will be put out about it,” said O’Brien. “I’ll go see about getting the holosuite secured so it's only available to the investigation team and can’t be hacked into. I’ll need a few deputies with me to test the security.”

“As secure as possible, to prevent witness tampering,” S’Vek looked like he was chewing nails with his need to join in the investigation.

This was DS9’s jurisdiction now and he had his own command to be concerned with.

“Well,” said Captain Picard with a sad finality. “I have families to contact. And Admirals to talk to.”

“I’ll stay,” said Troi pointedly. “We have funerals to plan as well.”

People started rising to their feet pointedly, the meeting concluded. Sisko still sat quietly, almost too still for words as the table emptied. Dax was still seated and Julian watched her quietly lean forward.

“Ben,” she said. “I just want you to know, if you need to talk to me, or just need me around, I’m here...she made a promise at the end, that no matter which Dax it was, Dax would stick with you through this war, so I’m going to keep that promise.”

Sisko looked up at her, his face almost amazed. Picard gave her a concerned look and Riker smiled wryly.

Julian suddenly felt himself being tugged by Crusher, who had a hand on his shoulder.

“C’mon,” she said quietly, “I wanted to talk to you about the Selvelvian Rot,” she said, almost whispering.

It wasn’t just him. S’Vek gave them a look as they passed him that was utterly, severely concerned, as concerned as any Vulcan could be, and clearly suspicious. Julian made a promise to himself not to be alone in a room with the spy, he didn’t know what would transpire but he felt that not even Garak’s death was enough to satisfy the determined spy from solving the mystery of Lewis Zimmerman.

Especially now that S’Vek’s fears about the Medical Holograms had been proven correct.

* * *

“You need to do the Selvelvian research,” said Beverly Crusher to Bashir, once they were fully alone, well, mostly alone on the promenade.

“I know I do, it's controversial I know but…”

“No, listen, this is important,” Beverly took a deep breath. “I was too scared, back in my early days on the _Enterprise_ , when I started my research and came up against that block, that genetic engineering block. But Dr. Pulaski, who was on the _Enterprise_ for a couple years, had a Selvelvian with the rot on board, who was friends with my son Wesley,” she put her hands in her pockets as they walked, feeling herself shaking. “My son worked himself almost threadbare trying to find a cure for his friend, and he ultimately didn’t succeed. But he wasn’t a medical researcher, he was an ensign, an engineer.”

“Fools rush in where wise men fear to tread, or rather, children and innocents in this case.”

Beverly had to smile at his attempt to show he meant no insult to her son.

“Oh, he could be rather foolish, my Wes,” she took another deep breath. “But he took an approach that was different, rather pointedly different. When Doctors look at a disease, we look at the symptoms, the cause, and then the virus itself. He had a different approach. He looked at its origins, the evolution of the disease, and before circumstances cut off his research he had pulled up a political map of the Alpha quadrant as it was during the early days of the virus. The Federation had not formed and he was researching the politics of the time for the possibility that the virus was engineered by enemies of Selvelvia.”

“Wouldn’t we have found genetic alterations of the disease in research attempts? From what I’ve looked at so far, the disease is inherited, not viral.”

Beverly nodded.

“Yes, unless it's a disease that has been incorporated into the genetic code of the host. The original virus disappeared and we are looking at the results hundreds of years later. It ran rampant during the early days of the Federation, but once Selvelvia became a Federation member we were able to prevent it from becoming a world wide pandemic.”

“Oh fu…” he cut off the curse midway. “So you guess the initial virus was programmed to change the genetic code of all Selvelvians to include an inheritable aberration of their genetic code?”

“Yes, and this is why I think there is such a mass ban against any research for a cure involving genetic engineering,” Beverly looked around, to make sure nobody was watching or listening. “I did my own checking of the politics that Wesley was poking his nose into. The only group at the time of the virus who had any political motive for creating a virus, was Vulcan.”

Bashir started, and seemed to instinctively look around, and turned to look at her, very real horror of what she was saying showing on his face.

“Vulcan made first contact with them,” said Bashir, reality setting in. “And Selvelvia not joining the Federation would have been…”

“Problematic...I’m sure,” said Beverly fiercely. “The onset of the disease crippled Selvelvia enough to force them to join the Federation for aid, and we expanded our territory greatly as a result. There may be a _political_ reason there’s a block in place preventing further research.”

“Oh Teacher,” his pet name for her was warming to her, and she put her hand on his arm to steer him back into walking towards the infirmary, they were going to draw attention just standing there. “It would be a great shame and embarrassment to Vulcan if they were the ones responsible, and maybe shatter the trust they have with so many worlds they helped join us…It could have been the medical and political community of Vulcan who was responsible at the time, or maybe it was one overly ambitious Vulcan politician wanting to secure his own career. But the whole Federation will want them to be held accountable to keep the member worlds from striking.”

“I was so afraid of what my son had found and what could happen to him, that I threw it all in the trash,” she felt her pain and shame coming up with tears leaking from her eyes. “But I’m sure we can start over.”

“We?” he smiled at her, delighted, yet concern was clear in his expression.

“You took a risk with your freedom and saved us on the station. I can take a risk to help you with my research, at least in some part, by looking up the origin. If we can prove that this was caused by a genetically engineered virus then all objection to your research will be over. I’d bet my career on it.”

Beverly felt intensely afraid for Doctor Bashir, and for Selvelvia, and for Vulcan, it's potentially shaky past and the Federation which it helped to found. If she was right, if her son was right, if this disease was a result of political maneuverings rather than evolution, then it could mean the end of Selvelvia’s membership in the Federation.

And the Federation needed all the allies it could get in the war. Regardless of the political consequences, she would set things right. Even if she had to risk a court martial to do it.

Hopefully, Bajor would side with Bashir one more time in support of the cause of compassion.

* * *

Admiral Ross felt himself a little unseated to see his son waiting for him at the rolling gear lock, red eyed and weepy, and looking miserable.

“Dad,” he said, and Ross sighed and moved in for the hug he knew he couldn’t get out of.

Internally he was aching for his son. Songbird had made friends with the crew here and had infinite levels of compassion for everyone around him, even strangers. Ross was certain he knew what the young man was feeling. But he knew how easily this man could lose his senses in the midst of his grief. He broke the hug off pointedly before his uniform became a sodden sponge.

“We’ll get through this,” Ross said. “We won the battle, despite our losses. Now we need to move forward.”

Songbird nodded, and then took his arm to walk with him down the hall. It was something that made him a little personally uncomfortable, but his son was a very physical person, something he had learned about the man when he was a sixteen year old runaway crashing his Admiral promotion ceremony.

“Listen,” said Songbird as they walked down the hallway, “I wanted to talk to you about my tour…”

Songbird’s ability to recover quickly to change the subject was now setting off an alarm in his head that he had to force to shut down. He couldn’t respond emotionally to Songbird the same way as he did with ordinary people. Some would see Songbird’s quick recovery as callous. It was just his fast genetically engineered mind, cutting off an emotional response in favor of a calculated one. It didn’t mean he didn’t care, not by any stretch.

“I know you want to get going, I’ve got to be certain a _galor_ warship doesn’t strike down on your position at a moment’s notice just because you’re Doctor Bashir’s husband.”

“Right,” said Songbird. “Which is why I wanted you to know I’ve hired the services of a security firm for my protection. I can’t do anything about _galor_ ships, but I can keep people off the stage and out of the audience who shouldn’t be there. And thanks to my Bajor concerts I have the money for it.”

“Which security firm?” Ross said, feeling a little insulted.

“Relax, they’re Taberis, Constable Odo recommended them to me so you can’t say they are shady in any way. And you can’t afford to have ships escorting me here and there, even if you have the privilege of rank to make those decisions. So you can stop worrying.”

“It seems as if you have your bases covered.” Ross chuckled. “Have you told your husband yet?” 

Songbird’s face turned sad again and he shrugged a little. Clearly he hadn’t.

“He knows you have to travel for your job, and I can’t keep you here forever, now that we have two people on the Thread,” Ross sighed and rolled back on his heels. “Bashir needs our trust now.”

“I know,” said Songbird. “But he really hasn’t had time to cry over his friends yet. Dax…” he sighed. “Has changed. And we’re all crying for Jadzia right now and there’s this funny fun new Dax here who I’m already friends with. It’s different, trying to mourn for a friend who is still there and yet not there either.”

“I can imagine,” Ross found himself standing at the lift for ops, and knew Songbird wasn’t coming to this meeting. “So tell me, has your message reached anyone yet?”

Songbird smiled.

“Unity now has double its original number. Which isn’t much, they were fourteen before, now they’re about thirty,” he smiled impishly. “It's not just my message from my lounge shows or that concert, it's Julian in the Thread really winning them over.”

Ross considered this. Of course, he knew exactly what Novos would think about this entire thing. But having a Faction that was pro-Federation on the Thread, making their case for them, seemed only to be a good thing. The Thread had kicked out Starfleet Intelligence officers who had been spying. You had to be an advanced person and you had to respect the rules. Starfleet Intelligence drew the line at not gathering personal information about possible threats and individuals they were looking for. It would be hard to convince them to take a neutral position on something like this. But his shiny new position in charge of the battlefront might be enough leverage to keep Novos in line on this.

And then there was Nacheyev, making all sorts of calls to Romulus in the last week. What was she up to?

_She said we needed a mediator, to handle the other worlds we want to help us fight the Dominion. How many people have the needed experience to end our war with the Dominion at the diplomatic level? Who do we have that is famous for bringing about peace between two major powers at war?_

The answer, when he finally arrived at it, caused a smile to rise on his face.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Ezri gets the Dax symbiont, and the purpose for the Zimmerman investigation is known. New problems arise. And hints of things to come. I love spy intrigues, and I have many ideas for how this can go in the future.
> 
> I have a very warm place in my heart for Dr Suess. I know a lot of people do. My own memories come from my my childhood, even in adolescence, I could escape bullies after school by hiding in the library at school and bury myself in books. Suess taught me how to hear the voices of the small and vulnerable, to not be afraid to try new things, to use my imagination on rainy days, and to respect the environment. I really wanted to use the Suess quote, though I paraphrased it, But I wasn't sure if it would be in character for Captain Picard to have read Suess as a child.
> 
> Then I realized. We all read Suess. Of course they would still have them in the future. Suess really is just universal and wonderful. :)
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this little tidbit into my writing process and my history as a writer.


	12. Sleeping Giants

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the last chapter in this part. Part five is going to be a time, I'm losing my love for this story, well not, I love this story. People seem to have lost interest in it. I hope this ending will be enough of a cliffhanger to keep your reading.

“Live long and prosper.”

“We are here to serve, Ambassador. I’m Commander Moira Thomas, I’ll be your escort for your visit”

The peppy Commander that met him at the shuttle port was a young and red haired human woman. With her hair pulled tightly back into a neat little bun, her eyes dancing with delight she was very much not what anyone would picture as being a Commander. The group she was here to greet him with consisted of no less than the whole command staff of this colony, the security heads, the colony leaders, and their delegates, head engineers and all science division heads. It was a rather large group.

_Of course, I should have expected this. I always underestimate my own notoriety and the levels to which people will go to try to impress me..._

Ambassador Spock was intrigued by the colony he had arrived upon, known as Solan II. He would be spending some time here, mostly due to its closeness to Romulus, and this would be the site of talks to bring Romulus perhaps into a peaceful alliance with the Federation. He hoped. It was a better way to continue his work of Reunification. He had gone as far as he could go with the Underground. It was up to the young people of Romulus now to spread the message.

“May I present she, who is my wife…” he raised an eyebrow, and stood sideways so Matel could come forward to shake hands with the startled officer in the human way.

Only his step-mother Perrin had been told about Matel. Of course not Starfleet, people would make a big situation about a simple, logical course of action. Matel was his age, shared his interest in Reunification, and was a student of his, as his first wife, Saavik, had been. She had been persecuted on Romulus by hard liners for a long time and yet had endured, and was very much a figurehead in the movement.

_Someone very much like myself._

Except that she smiled. Often. She hadn’t given herself fully to logic, rather, felt a half-and half approach would be more palatable to Romulan minds, logic being a good method for keeping cool in any situation, rather than a constant mental state. Her arguments did have some merit, he would admit, and they had gone over better with older Romulans. She had good humor and vibrant energy and laughed and bantered with the commander about the tiring ‘trip’ from Romulus and how excited she was to be able to travel with Spock. She had never travelled off world before.

In truth, the Romulan government had said that if he wanted to be in charge of these talks, he had to bring a Romulan with him. No ifs, ands or buts about it, as the human expression went. It might as well be his wife. He really didn’t need a mate at his age, but she was a very amiable companion, and he had to bow once more to the logic of their match. If only the rest of Vulcan would approve.

“We have prepared rooms for you in the Security Center. And believe it or not, it's one of the most beautiful places to stay in this colony,” Commander Thomas smiled as she walked with them. “The view from the central spire is unforgettable.”

“Its sounds wonderful,” said Matel, instinctively looking up. “I’m very much looking forward to seeing the entire colony from above.”

Spock could quite understand it. Solan II had been founded on the surface of a bare rocky moon. Its spires of tall white towers of fully reflective windows were spectacular, the tallest being almost twice the height of all the others. But this colony was also a science research center, and a testing facility for new technology. There would be a tour he was certain, and he was looking forward to seeing the technologies that were being tested here.

“I am very much intrigued by the androids you are rumored to be working on,” said Matel, looking around as if she was hoping to spot one in the sea of faces. “It must be a fascinating area of research.”

“Commander Maddox would be happy for anyone to visit his lab,” said Thomas, almost too eagerly as they walked towards their destination together. “We’re working with the Uang androids of Ferenginar.”

“Designed for the service industry, if I remember correctly,” said Spock. “For doing menial cleaning work and such.”

“We’re hoping to reprogram them for other duties,” she replied, cryptically. “We were working with Soong technology until recently. Much of it has been put on hold in favor of the Ferengi androids.”

She helpfully pointed one out to them as they were walking, its head was literally a screen that could be interacted with, and its skinny body seemed more like it was designed to act as a stand than arms and legs. It was currently giving information to interested visitors coming from the shuttle bay port.

“Fascinating,” said Spock, stopping to look over the list of tourist destinations for the colony that the android was displaying. “Most curious...what kind of brain does it employ?”

“Duotronic,” said Commander Thomas. “Left and Right brain cooperative functionality and complex mathematical computation,” she seemed to stop, and was more considering his wife than him, when she continued. “We’re testing them in all areas of Starfleet; Engineering, Astrophysics, Medicine, all the Physical sciences and…” she seemed to hesitate. “Security.”

“Perhaps having military applications for the conflict with the Dominion,” Spock cut her to the punch. “Most intriguing.”

Matel seemed delighted by the robot, and worked through the menu in order to bring up the map of their route to the security tower. Spock watched the screens going by and raised his eyebrow, the blank observing single eye on the center top of the screen flashing briefly green, before going empty, without any emotion that a humanoid appearing android would have.

“Delightful,” Matel said, once she had the map. “I’m looking forward to hearing from your Commander Maddox all about his work.”

Spock took the cue from her to keep walking, committing the map to memory, but the empty eye filled him with a momentary concern as he thought about the future of the Federation.

_Security...or observation?_

He really couldn’t ascertain which, and decided to put it out of his mind, for now.

* * *

It was a serious problem, the Ambassador’s visit. For one, he was now on duty almost constantly, monitoring every security camera on the colony for any signs of any tiny threat of any kind. He was now not permitted to leave the security center, and kept to his office and to his quarters, well aware that the colony would be horrified if the proud Ambassador and his wife even learned of his existence.

Spider was Solan II’s dirty little secret.

He watched the monitor of the security camera with a sigh, noting the Ambassador and his wife, now touring the laboratories of Commander Bruce Maddox, who was working to turn the Uang androids into an army to help fight the Dominion.

Basically this was his goal. Starfleet no longer cared about the science and the prosperity of the Federation and was concerned entirely with keeping its borders from shrinking. The virus on Earth had spooked them all, and no cure seemed to be forthcoming anytime soon. The Federation at large was slowly being told about the Earth’s quarantine, all traffic to the planet had ceased, and Spider knew exactly what this meant.

_The Children of Khan have created just the right conditions to take control. We need a fast cure…_

Unity was working on the problem. Doctor Bashir had been working feverishly for weeks. Now that the _Enterprise_ had been stolen the need to get the Federation back in working order was now even more apparent. There were even talks of moving the Federation Headquarters to Vulcan.

_That would kill it. Parliament is more neutral, and far more well liked and respected. And far too remote! Its just a bad situation all around. Earth is still the United Earth. Its identity is entirely built up as being the center of the Federation and home of Starfleet Headquarters. Shepherd is about to control a very very dangerous position of power…_

Spider looked over the security monitors as he thought through the problem. The Ambassador was a problem to his own exit plans, as he could never get time alone, constantly being watched to make sure he didn’t bump into the Vulcan pair now living in the same building as him.

You wouldn’t know it to see the Vulcan’s expansive suites, with the huge protected and shielded balcony looking out over the colony. Spider’s own view from the tiny window in his tower room was so small he didn’t get any natural light.

_All right Quasimodo stop feeling sorry for yourself, you could leave any time you wanted, but this colony is a great place to hide and run the Thread. Just put up with it for a little while longer…_

He knew he still had to make sure there was a security force on this colony able to protect them should the Romulans sign with the Dominion instead of the Federation alliance. And once Romulus saw their plans for the Uang robots, they would do just that. The Uang androids were no match for the Jem’Hadar.

_Arming them and putting them in colonies like this is more like police control over normal citizens, and Romulus might be interested in them merely for that function._

Spider tapped his console to bring up the next security monitor. Spock and his wife were seated now, and talking with Maddox and the colony leaders about these all important issues, as he sat there watching them.

_It won’t matter a hair if the Children of Khan seize control of Earth. We need the Firebird to unite the Factions and put him to the sword…_

Spider shook the cobwebs out of his head. He had been reading too many old fantasy novels from Earth lately. He tapped another button on his screen to change the view to watching the Ambassador from the back and sighed.

_Only three people can be the Firebird...I know it isn’t me. I know who I suspect...but lets think it over logically._

Spider had been there, had been one of the witnesses to Soong’s presence on Adigeon Prime. He was also keeping that to himself. Soong had interacted with their group of four, spending time with each child, before leaving it up to the medical staff to decide what to do with the research he had left them. Spider remembered being given a big stack of comic books to read by the scientist, all original print in their plastic sheaths, and he had started calling himself Spider after falling in love with the exploits of Peter Parker. But he knew he wasn’t the Firebird, his colony had designed his DNA and had tinkered with it for a few years before finally being happy with their creation and ending the hospital visits. Now he was their shameful secret experimental Augment officer. Not the Firebird. So who did that leave?

Sala Gabriel would have been the most interesting choice of the three. He’d been watching her conversations in the Thread and tracking Starfleet’s investigation of her. Soong had wanted to hide his work as much as possible, and nobody in the Factions was expecting a woman, so it made her a very likely choice. Still, her history and profile showed very little to indicate any of the changes to DNA that the Factions had agreed upon for their Firebird. A highly strategic calculating and mathematical mind had been of primary importance for the Factions. Still, he couldn’t judge her from her Starfleet file, she had been making great strides for her Faction. She had been very sneakily getting in here and there, and had even robbed the Daystrum Institute. He had to give her credit for that.

_Stealth is her strongest suit...infiltration._

Soong had given her copies of the Nancy Drew mysteries as her gift. He decided that the choice well suited her.

Ethan Locken, known as The Shepherd to his Faction, was the most frightening possibility of the trio. Everything the Factions had wanted was clearly present in this unassuming geneticist. He was a force to be reckoned with, a Section 31 agent, the leader of the Children of Khan, the creator of two serious genetically engineered viruses, the one on Earth, and the one that was slowly making its way around the Dominion…Strategic, calculating, a naturally commanding presence, all that incredible physical stealth and endurance, and highly logical. Soong had given him the Lord of the Rings series and the Hobbit as his books.

Spider was starting to feel oddly concerned about the fact that the others had been given fiction, and he had been given picture stories. But considering the material value of his original comics, still intact, in their sleeves, no longer mint from his frequent reading of them, he realized that if all Soong cared about was giving them books to read, he could have given them all PADDs full of literature. The comics were such a wonderful and treasured experience from his childhood, surely it had been the physical format and the value of the objects Soong had been considering in giving those gifts. And there was little else about his childhood that could be called wonderful. He had been training in security ever since leaving that hospital, and had very few free moments to just be a kid. Those comic books had given him something of a fantasy world to escape into, his childhood bedroom becoming a palace of heroes; Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and of course Spiderman, all his heroes, the Green Lantern, Aquaman, Wolverine and all the X Men. He had been a mutant amongst mutants in his childhood dream world.

_You’re doing it again Quasimodo, are you going to cry about living here or do something about it?_

His mind went to the last of the three potential Firebirds and he smiled.

Doctor Julian Bashir was, in his mind, everything the Factions had wanted. An intelligent mind, adaptive, well loved by many, showing the signs of being able to command many followers, physically very tough without looking like it, highly unassuming. Accelerated critical neural pathway formation. Or, in other words, he was designed to create whatever pathways he needed to adapt and grow in whatever direction he wanted to grow. Which could, technically, be said to fit all the requirements of the Factions since he could do exactly anything. He had already done what it was thought only Khan could do; come back from the dead.

Doctor Soong had given Doctor Bashir the Harry Potter books. He could also, quite cleanly, remember the young Jules being called ‘Fawkes' by the scientist.

 _Is that it? Is that the clue?_ _None of the other book series have Firebirds in them. Or was Soong just giving us all a red herring?_

Spider hated second guessing himself. And he hated the very real fact that there was a one in three chance of Shepherd and the Children of Khan ruling the Factions by proxy.

_I need to be more daring. Dreamer is on the Enterprise now, the Brotherhood has what it needs. It just need to put the pieces together. I have my suspicions, but the Factions won't be happy with what I think, they will want evidence from Soong himself._

Spider could try to tell them all that Soong visited their group in the hospital. He assumed Sala Gabriel would have told them all by now, if she remembered. But then again, Soong had visited four different hospitals that year, and the only reason Spider felt that their group was the right group was because of the gifts of books. Soong had spent time with them for a reason.

 _I don't buy Neutrality's excuse that Soong didn't know himself. He would need to know which one it was for the data chips…_ Spider tapped on the security monitor once more. The Ambassador’s group was now leaving and he sighed.

Spider would have to go back ‘upstairs’ soon. But he now decided that it might be worth it just to remove the chip from Lore’s head and give it to Doctor Bashir. If Dreamer was unable to find someone to repair his damaged neural net...a direct course of action was needed. If Bashir couldn't access the chip, or it was damaged, then it all depended on Dreamer.

_I really need to stop spying on the conversations of private members. I’m starting to act like a Starfleet spy._

Spider got up dutifully just as his relief came over to take over his station, and gave the sour faced lieutenant who replaced him a soft smile and a nod.

Despite their fear and distrust of them, he had never shown the colonists anything but deep respect and kindness. He had never given anything but his best for this colony. In a way, despite living all of his life in this tower like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, he had learned to love them as if they were his family. He had done the job he had been designed to do, guard, protect and take care of this colony as its secret defender and protector for almost thirty years.

And soon he would be leaving. It was almost too much to take. Freedom and goodbye all in one go. But he wasn’t going to leave them without a proper farewell present.

Thirty years of weaving the most beautiful security web around this facility, his private network of every tiny camera and monitor and sensor in the colony, which he had pretty much taken control of completely. He had created, in Spiral, the most beautifully sophisticated security software suite the Federation would ever see, and he would give them the access when he left.

_In all fairness, they’ll think I was spying on them, question my motives, and who knows what charges. But if they don’t use what I’ve given them, it’ll be their failure, not mine. I did my best. Exactly as I was designed to do._

It was time to go back up into his tower and ring some proverbial bells, access the Thread and start cleaning up his workstation to dissect Lore’s head. The Spider was returning to his nest.

* * *

She was praying. Vulcans rarely prayed. Prayer implied belief in a religious deity or a higher power. But over a thousand years Vulcans had developed their culture and small sayings, soft quotations and various bits of verse and poetry had worked its way into these ‘prayers’ which were used as a logical way to calm the emotional mind during moments of potential emotional slippage. Weddings, funerals, tragedies, the birth or death of a child, or a family member. War, the rage of anger, could be brought down by careful repetitious recitation of these verses, silently or verbally, and meditations brought about a clear inner mental state.

She had been praying for over an hour, because she had gotten to that point. She had been glued to the communiques from Deep Space Nine and the Federation News Service, anxiety and fear had found the Human quarter of her heart, or perhaps seized the Romulan quarter. Her parents had both been half-Vulcans from very different emotional cultures. But Romulans were genetically like Vulcans, so it was the logic practice, not the genetics, that decided their state of mind. She could not blame her Human genes, or her Romulan genes for what her Vulcan upbringing had failed to train her for the possibility of.

A life without Data.

Savil opened her eyes, and was alarmed by the blurriness of her vision. Tears were spilling over, and her adoptive mother had already been in twice today. If she came in again and saw the tears, it would all be ruined, She could not control herself and who knows what that would mean? She could not be trusted to raise a Vulcan child without emotional control. And a trip to the hospital for something that was not Human, or Romulan, or Vulcan, but illogical in every respect and couldn’t be logically meditated away.

_Fear is illogical._

She couldn’t feel the logic in that statement at all. Fear served a natural evolutionary purpose. It protected the self from danger, it brought about a state of caution. But her very real fear of losing her husband to a war she had no part of was just very hard to logic away.

Especially more troubling was the sound of small footsteps, smaller than an adult, moving in the outer room towards her meditation chamber.

“Computer, what time is it?”

_“The current time is twenty two hundred hours Vulcan standard.”_

She had been praying and meditating very late, and Vinek was out of bed when he should not have been. She tried to school her face into a mask as he opened the door of her work room and peered in.

“Vinek, it is late and you should be sleeping,” she admonished, dismayed by the waver in her voice.

“I cannot sleep, Savil, and you were not in your room so I came looking for you.”

A logical course of action. It was too dark in here, surely. He would not see the tear stains. He closed the door behind him and came in, a few feet at a time, looking at her, hesitantly, expecting more admonishments.

None came. Instead she realized it was unfair and illogical to admonish him for an affliction she herself shared.

“I too could not sleep,” she said, and Vinek came over to her, looked at her face intently, the concerned gaze of a child, and frowned.

“You have been crying,” he said. “Why?”

He was asking the right questions in response to her emotional response, that much was certain. His own eyes were turning damp, his own face was showing the signs of having recently cried.

“I was afraid,” she said.

“Fear is illogical,” he said, which was exactly what they had been trying to teach him.

“Why are you crying?” she asked him now, and felt her breath hitch in her chest.

“Because I’m sad,” said Vinek. “My father always used to say sadness was logical when one lost someone. I lost my parents. And now I’m losing my adoptive parents.”

“No you’re not...I will not leave you,” Savil put her arms out, in a way Vulcan parents never did, and Vinek wrapped his arms around her neck and she held him.

And they both cried, his face on her shoulder, her face on his, and they both considered the husband and father that had made both of them promises and was now gone, gone and maybe never to return. The future was uncertain for them both. All they had now was each other.

“We won’t give up,” said Vinek forcefully, and sniffed and rubbed his face, pulling back from the hug. “We will wait for Data to come home. Won’t we?”

Savil looked at him, and thought, logically, back to her wedding, back to their vows.

_Until death do us part…_

“We will,” she said, and then smiled, because it felt natural.

It was strange to her how strangely normal and therapeutic emotions could be.

* * *

Daran Vanar slipped into the decorative nook of the building quietly, not wanting to alert the passing Jem’Hadar forces to his presence. Their marching timely patrols of two to four along the streets of the Capital were a regular sight now, and nobody dared get in their way. Jem’Hadar did not joke around.

He waited until he was certain he wasn’t being seen to continue on his route, and found the doorway in question and knocked twice. The door opened and he beat his hasty way into the house, ignoring his butler Motan for a moment before sitting.

“It's merciless,” he said, and lifted the isolinear rod from his pocket to look over. “All the Underground is cut off from one another, it was almost impossible to reach them. They are checking every nook and cranny,” he turned the data rod over in his hands. “I don’t even know if this is the right one, Tain didn't label them in order, but you would know better I suppose. Tain was supposed to be very unceasing in his perfectionism. I found his lab was…really just the opposite,” he looked up at Motan, the mute butler giving him a shrug. “We will have to chance it. The Underground and Tain _both_ would have wanted this…”

Motan smiled at this. Tain had cut this spy’s vocal chords out as punishment for failures, but Vanar felt that perhaps this had been a bit too much. However his silence must have been a good source of security. How was it that so many people overlooked the possibility of giving a mute witness a simple PADD to write on? None of the Jem’Hadar who had come to question them about their daily work had bothered talking to the butler.

Motan may have been a very good spy, but he was a poor butler, and Vanar felt that he himself was making a very poor resistance fighter as a result. He had accepted the spy as his butler in hopes that the Order, what was left of it, would support the Underground. But he was not giving Vanar very much in the way of everyday comfort and his sleep was suffering enough from his own resistance activities. He would have appreciated at least a hot meal. Mostly it was cold reconstituted soup he came home to. No warmed slippers or news PADD waiting by the door, but then again, this man was posing as a butler, not a housewife. His own wife had died in childbirth and his son was away at school, thank the Guls, and out of the capital.

_I don’t want Belan involved in any of this, at his young age._

But he needed the spy here for this assignment and had agreed to help Motan with his own mission in exchange for information from the rest of the Order. The last remnants of the Obsidian Order were now circling around to either joining the Dominion or siding with the Underground. The Order needed a new leader to unify them, and fast. Motan wanted the Underground's help to make them a leader. And then the Order would help them retake the planet from the Dominion.

As a result, Vanar’s wine cellar was a hiding place for many things. Many things. A few deft taps at an access panel could reveal many different hidden rooms, if you knew the codes. Two people did. Him and Motan. The room he found his way into was well lit, sterile, and contained wall to wall medical and security monitors and consoles, all crammed together around a long gray tube in the center of the room; a cryogenic stasis unit. Motan had been installing all of this, and sneaking things in, with the Underground's help. Now they were ready to start.

“Well, this the last one, you said there were three in total?” Vanar looked down into the sleeping face of the unit's occupant. “Three clones, and Tain really was an utter sadist wasn’t he? Can’t just let a man die in peace...”

Motan couldn’t say anything, just smiled and went over to the computer monitors and began working the controls for the memory implant procedure. Vanar looked over the isolinear rod one last time for physical defects before handing it over to Motan. He had to hand it to Tain, his operatives knew what they were doing. Vanar did not. One data rod looked much like the rest as far as he was concerned.

Motan examined the rod with his eyes carefully, the artificial light too bright for Vanar but seemingly just fine for the mute. The other Cardassian smiled, and nodded brightly, and put the rod deftly into its designated slot in the computer system.

Cardassians had stolen a lot of Federation technology over the years as well as from Klingons, Romulans and many others. The Obsidian Order had been reduced to mere ashes but were already adapting the Dominion technology as well, to make use of the research of the controversial Doctor Ira Graves and the criminal Roa Vantica. Enabran Tain had wanted immortality. Had craved it. And had decided to test immortality on his own flesh and blood.

The cryogenic status unit hissed with the releasing of gasses, and Vanar stood back very far, not sure what the sleeping spy inside would think about the end of his silent slumber and the beginning of a new life. Vanar didn’t think much of cloning, or of clones themselves, but a clone with the memories of an entire lifetime of a single Obsidian Order spy implanted into his head was another thing.

The clone woke slowly, and slowly sat up, accepting Motan’s helping hand out of the unit, moving carefully, almost as if he was in pain. This clone had been created almost a year ago and was likely feeling stiff from spending too much time in stasis. Motan smiled at him, and the other Cardassian smiled back, a warm and friendly smile and eyes...blue as ice, turned, and then considered him, and the face went back to a more neutral expression.

“Well what are you waiting for?” said Elim Garak, admonishing him. “I am standing here completely and utterly naked, and that will not do. Cardassia’s greatest tailor shouldn’t be naked, what will people think?”

_Oh my guls...he thinks I’m a servant? Well that says something for the state of Cardassia when the Legate in charge of Civilian Affairs is seen as little more than a butler._

But then again, they had always just been mere puppets and tools to the eyes of the Obsidian order, hadn’t they? He really hoped that history wasn’t about to repeat itself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a sadist. I know. The biggest sadist. I hate that I loved this story arc. I knew I wanted Garak to fake his death and get to Cardassia, but I didn't know how I could do it and wasn't sure how well it would fit into my story, which is about Data and Bashir's dual opposite paths in the conflict.
> 
> Of course I couldn't spoil this twist for everyone in Rising Fury and I got emotional about it but now here we are. Our lovely tailor is back. But how old are his clone's memories? Is he the same person, or not? I'm not going to spoil this for you, but you would have to guess that Garak made regular uploads to send to Tain up until the man's capture by the Dominion, so that's a good timeline to go by.
> 
> I also liked bringing in Spock and having him on the same colony Spider is on. I knew Spider was on a colony, and Spock would come into the story here at the end of this part, but I think having them in the same place weaves the two sides of the story a little more together. Spock was initially supposed to host the talks on Vulcan, bringing him back to daughter Savil. But I want to leave them apart a little while longer.
> 
> Matel gets her name from Maetel from Galaxy Express 999 still one of my favorite of all time manga series..


	13. Lamentation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I was writing this, I realized this would have made more sense here at the end of this story, rather than at the beginning of Ashes to Ashes. The more I thought about it, the more I decided to tack it on here at the end so nobody misses it. Sorry about any confusion, you'll find this in Ashes to Ashes as well.

Jean-Luc Picard stood silently at attention, feeling his chest hurting in a way he hadn’t been expecting it to, and for once he wasn’t feeling at all uncomfortable in his dress uniform. He was feeling as if he couldn’t dress up enough. Nothing they could do could make this ceremony more formal enough to satisfy him, or relieve him of the empty place that existed inside of his aching soul.

Worf’s howl of warning to Sto-Vo-Kor began the proceedings, as they all had agreed, allowing them the dignity of a following silence as Admiral Ross read the names of the dead. Here present were the remaining _Enterprise_ personnel, the crews of the fleet ships that were still docked at the station, as well as the Federation civilians on board DS9.

All of them were standing in respectful silence of the rows of coffins with their flags. The empty torpedo tubes in the center of the cramped cargo bay, practically touching each other was an accusation. It had taken some time to prepare this funeral, because there had been a lot of funerals, but this one was specifically for the _Enterprise_ crew members who had been on board the _Enterprise_ when they died. Maybe it was the size of the cargo bay, but it seemed like such a small funeral. It wasn’t enough.

Geordi Laforge. Reginald Barclay. Rhodes. Jenkins. Perry. The names were all a blur now as Admiral Ross spoke them. But the first two stood out to Picard. Two very good men. Good officers and good engineers.

But Geordi’s best friend was not here. Picard would not and could not rest until he knew why Data had flown. The investigation was still ongoing but he knew he would not be satisfied until he had spoken to his first officer face to face.

And he still considered the man his First Officer. He would do so until all the evidence and his own investigations have proven otherwise

Several heads rose suddenly in alarm when the doors of the cargo bay opened and in walked four Bajorans Vedics, and it was apparent, immediately, it wasn’t just the Vedics.

Doctor Bashir and Major Kira entered after the Vedics, followed by Odo and many of his deputies, the Bajoran Medical nurses and staff, and soon most of the Bajoran officers on the station had crowded into the cargo bay. And the group didn’t end there. Two children entered the cargo bay with a Bajoran flag, which they carried over to the front of the group of tubes and laid out on the floor. Several more children entered to lay flowers on the flag on the ground, and around the bases of the coffins.

And all the while, as the children did this, the adults were quietly chanting, the Bajoran funeral chant, in unison, eyes closed, hands held up, and voices soft so as to not be intrusive. Even Doctor Bashir, his head down and his face a mask of sorrow.

Picard felt his own tears before he realized he still had any tears left to shed. Troi buried her beautiful face into Riker’s shoulder and the tall stolid man was choking back his own response. Crusher was just sobbing and Worf put a consoling hand on her shoulder.

Feelings couldn’t be spoken in words. It was so respectfully caring, and so completely Bajoran a response that Picard could not stop himself from smiling, just a little.

No, they were not done mourning here. And there was a lot of work to do to ensure justice for his fallen crew. A lot of questions still needed to be answered.

But Bajor was with them. The Federation was not without friends in this crisis. They would endure.

Picard knew Bajoran funeral chants could last for days, but the Bajorans used a more truncated form and came to a respectful silence.

And as one they all stood there, in respectful silence for the dead, a unified family, and now the cramped cargo bay seemed as wide and full of the power of their gathering as the Sydney Opera House. Nothing anyone could do could break this feeling of community and unity.

Nothing.


End file.
